Either "&" or "/"

The solidus (virgule, “slash”) is an idiogram, one of very few in written English. In written text, it does not merely indicate parsing. On the contrary, the solidus has several proper uses:

• To indicate disjunction,
• To separate the numerator from the denominator in a numerical fraction,
• As a delimiter to separate month, day, and year in calendar dates,
• As a delimiter to separate fields in a data record, and
• To separate lines of poetry when written in paragraph form.

It may be that people use the solidus to indicate conjunction all the time, but widespread abuse still does not constitute proper use. One should NEVER use a solidus to indicate conjunction; instead, one should use an ampersand (&), which connotes conjunction.

A conjunction is expressed by the word “and,” and a disjunction is expressed by the word “or.” In the absence of an exclusive qualifier, by default, a disjunction is inclusive, which is to say that it can also be conjunctive (that is, it can mean "'and' or 'or'"), but the primary sense is nevertheless disjunctive. A janitor could legitimately represent himself as “President/Chief Financial Officer/Product Manager/Janitor” because it is true that he is indeed the president or the chief financial officer or the product manager or the janitor. To make the disjunction exclusive, it is necessary to add a qualifying phrase, such as, “but not both,” as in, “you may have mustard or ketchup, but not both.”

Given that the solidus is equivalent to the word “or,” it is very odd that people so often utter the nickname for the symbol (“slash”) instead of simply saying “or.” This utterance is even frequently accompanied by gesturing in the air with the index and middle fingers of both hands, as if the speakers sense that the nickname “slash” alone is not sufficient. This habit suggests that the speakers do not even realize the simple disjunctive meaning of what they themselves are saying. What could possibly be odder than that?