Why do so many people confuse "/" as a backslash?

Question

This question will probably get closed. But I am very curious so I wanted to ask it anyways in hopes it will start a good discussion.

It seems like more people think / is a backslash then the ones who know its not.

I have even hear radio ads that say:

Our site dot com back slash jobs

You would think at least one person at the ad agency would catch this and correct it.

To me its very clear which is which sense the backslash appears to be leaning backwards and the forward slash appears to be leaning forwards (unless you read right to left).

So why does it seem like over half the people get it backwards?

Answer 1

It's because DOS/Windows uses the backslash as a path separator. It has been a part of common folks' computer nomenclature for much longer than the web has had people using the forward slash for other URLs. People are accustomed to using it for that purpose, so it is easy to make a mistake.

Answer 2

I always thought people confused it due to some people thinking the "forward" part of the slash was the bottom, and others thought it was on the top.

Answer 3

I think that for most people who aren't programmers, they see and understand no difference between '/' and '\'.

It's a real shame that MS-DOS used '/' for command line switches way back when, otherwise we might be in a blissful environment where '/' was used as a path separator nearly universally.

That would be nice...