How to type Forward Slash
/ is the / key, in the same place on US and UK keyboards. Alt + 47 on the numeric keypad produces it on any Windows layout, which is the way in when the keyboard in front of you has no key for it, and / writes it in HTML. Its codepoint is U+002F.
Solidus
- Copy it
- Unicode
- U+002F
- Windows
- Alt + 47
| Where | Shortcut | How |
|---|---|---|
| Windows | Alt + 47 | Hold Alt and type the number on the numeric keypad. |
| HTML | / | Paste this into HTML source. |
| Unicode | U+002F | SOLIDUS |
Symbols related to Forward Slash
The Unicode code chart points from / to ⁄, and the rest are filed under solidus and stroke in CLDR, the keyword list Unicode publishes alongside the names.
Other punctuation symbols
/ lives in the Basic Latin block (U+0000-U+007F), the original ASCII set: the letters, digits and punctuation printed on a US keyboard. Within Unicode it is classified as Po, a punctuation mark. Its bidirectional class makes it a common number separator.
What Forward Slash is used for
In mathematical notation / is an ordinary symbol: it carries no special spacing and sits in an expression the way a letter does, standing for a thing rather than doing something to the things around it. That is the classification unicode-math gives it, and it is what decides how the symbol is set: $\mathslash$ in LaTeX, in maths mode rather than in a sentence.
Unicode publishes a second list of names for / in CLDR, the keywords its own search data offers rather than the formal name, and they are oblique, solidus, stroke and virgule. Those words are what somebody looking for this character is liable to type when Forward Slash is not the name they know it by, and the search on the symbol lists matches them as well as the Unicode name.
What / gets confused with
Unicode's own confusables table, the one used to catch lookalike domain names, groups / with ⁄ (U+2044, Fraction Slash). They are separate characters that render close enough to be mistaken for one another, so a search or a string comparison will separate them where your eye will not. If Forward Slash is not matching where you expect it to, one of these is the usual reason.
What Unicode says about Forward Slash
The standard recognises / under another name as well: slash, forward slash, virgule. That is a formal alias, not a nickname, which is why it turns up in other people's documentation for the same codepoint.
The code chart points from / to Fraction Slash, combining long solidus overlay (U+0338), division slash (U+2215), mathematical rising diagonal (U+27CB), big solidus (U+29F8) and dotted solidus (U+2E4A). These are the characters the standard thinks you might have meant instead, which makes them the ones worth checking when Forward Slash looks nearly right but not quite.
How Forward Slash behaves in software
/ takes one column in a terminal. It carries no direction of its own, so in a line that mixes English with Arabic or Hebrew it takes the direction of the text around it rather than forcing one.
Every way to write Forward Slash
| Form | Value |
|---|---|
| Codepoint | U+002F |
| Decimal | 47 |
| UTF-8 bytes | 2F |
| UTF-16 bytes | 00 2F |
| HTML entity | / |
| HTML numeric | / or / |
| CSS | \002F |
| JavaScript | \u002F |
| Python | \u002F |
| URL-encoded | %2F |
| LaTeX, in maths mode | $\mathslash$ |
| SVG | 002F.svg · (SIL Open Font License) |
If / needs escaping
/ is one byte in ASCII, in UTF-8 and in every code page in common use, so it never arrives corrupted. Its problem is the opposite one: it means something to the software reading it. In HTML it can be written /, in a URL it is %2F, and inside a CSV field, a shell command or a regular expression it has to be quoted or escaped rather than typed plainly. That is also why / is the character people substitute when the one they wanted will not type.