I really haven't followed this thread, but I should comment here on this. I've 
looked into this because of having to teach newbies, and to make a long, boring 
topic short, I've found that it's from 'Microsoft'. ;)

Until DOS and the PC, the backslash wasn't in many people's usage. THEN, with 
the PC, you had to use it or fail and people would make sure they used the 
backslash when using the PC. Even when another newbie said 'slash' a sophomore 
newbie would assume backslash. Being beaten with error messages helped. So 
everyone of that lineage has typed backslash orders of magnitude more than they 
ever typed a slash.

So, there are a lot of people trained to translate backslash at any sort of 
slash. In this case, journalists have often had to use custom systems built on 
older platforms, many times text (and DOS) based, so they would have lots of 
experience with backslashes.

It's just their 'programming' kicking in.


Lucas Thompson wrote:
> Maybe that explains why half the time when I hear someone on the
> television or radio read aloud a URL they say "backslash" when they
> mean to say "slash". :)
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