Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Forward slash

Sometimes, over a cup of breakfast coffee in the restaurant at work, a small group of colleagues and I debate whether we're turning into grumpy old men. Now before you start, I know that there may well exist a school of thought that says we're there already, but most days I would defend my continued youthful vigour with...err...youthful vigour.

It's just that I find small things have started to irritate the hell out of me for no good reason, and one of the worst is people in the media who insist on reading out URLs with FORWARD SLASH in them.

The BBC are appalling for this "...and you can go to our website www.bbc.co.uk FORWARD SLASH radio4 FORWARD SLASH today". God. It's just slash, alright? If it was the other one it would be BACKslash. This one is just slash, plain and simple. Some of the younger more Internet-savvy presenters have cottoned on and will rattle through the domain name quite quickly, even missing off the www sometimes. But the older ones are still in the majority with their FORWARD SLASH and their emphasis on the dots - bbc DOT... co DOT... uk - as if we didn't know they were there.

All this passes John Humphrys by, of course. When he was a lad, this character: / was called a STROKE, and by golly as far as he is concerned, it always will be. So his URLs are the most idiosyncratic of the lot. Nowhere else in the media, to my knowledge, will you hear "bbc dot co dot uk STROKE radio4 STROKE today." It sounds vaguely erotic, but very Radio 4!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

By jove - I rather *like* STROKE! I think you may have started something!

Anonymous said...

Well yes, but don't forget there's a lot of folk out there still looking for the "any" key

Digger said...

That's the hardest one to find!

Anonymous said...

Where is the any key anyhows? ...