Hi, English isn’t my mother tongue so I was asking myself that question since I first encounted a w/… Back then I was like: “What tf does ‘w slash’ stand for?” And when I found out I was like “How, why, and is it any intuitive?” But I never dared to ask that until now

  • ReluctantMuskrat@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    My guess is these became common with the telegraph. Since messages were expensive and the sender paid by the letter, abbreviations where commonly used to keep messages short.