slash

[Charles C Doyle]

Not the same topic, really, but this is still about vocalized (or "oralized") punctuation marks:

One of my students insists that she attended high school with a girl who spelled her name L--a and pronounced it "la dash ah" (the "dash" should appear as a solid line, probably).

I shared the information about L--a with a friend who teaches in elementary school, and she reported a similarly named student in her school:  K--a.

Of course, there are other vocalized and verbalized  punctuation marks (not counting Victor Borge's comedy routines), like "dot dot dot," and the clause-final exclamation "period!" and "quote" slash "unquote."

--Charlie

________________________________________
From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of Randy Alexander [strangeguitars at GMAIL.COM]
Sent: Friday, August 27, 2010 9:33 AM
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For those who missed it on Language Log, Brett Reynold's of the blog
_English, Jack_, has identified a new coordinator, "slash", as in
"There is also a study slash guest bedroom".

You can see Geoff Pullum's LL post here:

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2584

Maybe some of the antedating aficionados can track down earlier instances.

--
Randy Alexander
Xiamen, China

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