Where did the abbreviation "w/" for "with" come from?

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨Zyratoxx@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨[deleted]⁩

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

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squaresinger@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
All in all, the / is just one style of abbreviation used in English. It’s not only used for “with”, but also a few other words (w/o = without, N/A = not applicable).

In German we abbreviate using a dot (e.g. “m.” = “mit” = "with). That’s not more or less intuitive, it’s just what you are used to.

What’s kinda special with English is that there are multiple abbreviation styles. Off the top of my head I can think of six styles:

Abbreviate random parts of words using a slash: “N/A”, “w/”, "w/o"

Abbreviate keeping only the first letter of a word using a dot: "e.g."

Abbreviate keeping the first and some random later consonants (and sometimes consonants that aren’t in the word at all) without using punctuation: Dr, Mr, Ms, Mrs

Abbreviate using acronyms and no punctuation: BBC

Abbreviate using acronyms and dots: B.C.

Abbreviate by substituting parts of the word with a single letter: Xmas (Christmas), Xing (Crossing)
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- candybrie@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  I’m used to Dr., Mr., Mrs. all needing the dot.
  
  I’d also add the medical ones which all use x, and most use the first letter of the word, but not all:
  
  Prescription: rx
  
  Symptoms: sx
  
  Diagnosis: dx
  
  History: hx
  
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  - Izzgo@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    I learned similar shorthand from an accountant, who wrote transfer (money transfer between accounts) as tx.
    
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  - squaresinger@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Both are possible: Dr and Dr.
    
    Never heard of the x version. Very interresting.
    
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  - GrayBackgroundMusic@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    
    Prescription: rx
    
    I work in radio electronics and RX is receive. TX is transmit.
    
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- Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Dr., Mrs., Ms. etc. are traditionally abbreviated with periods/dots but it does raise issues typing on one’s phone because autocorrect thinks it’s the end of a sentence, so sans dots is becoming more common. And there’s other examples which have never had dots, like nvm and af
  
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  - CoggyMcFee@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Using the period with titles is standard in the US and leaving out the period is standard in the UK.
    
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  - GrayBackgroundMusic@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    
    Edit: anyone else always pronounce PED XING as pedexing instead of pedestrian crossing?
    
    Yes, that’s how I pronounce it.
    
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  - Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    As a non-Christian, I never made that Xmas connection. It sounds cool, but I was never sure why anyone started calling that (and evidently never curious enough to go looking for an answer or even really ask, I just kinda took it as one of those things that is how it is because people are going to people).
    
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  - squaresinger@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Both Dr and Dr. are possible.
    
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  - Rouxibeau@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    When you type Dr., et al., you normally follow it with a proper noun. Why is the auto caps an issue?
    
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- deranger@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Don’t forget re: which means regarding or in reference to, not reply.
  
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  - Taniwha420@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    … I think it’s actually a Latin word, “re,”, meaning, “the matter (subject)” not an abbreviation at all.
    
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- Rentlar@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  don’t forget using contractions on single words, like cont’d, pop’n (sometimes written pop^n^)
  
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- TimewornTraveler@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  don’t forget x in medical settings. eg, dx is diagnose, tx is treatment, etc
  
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- seitanic@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Those are initialisms, not acronyms.
  
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  - Klear@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Wikipedia at least sees initialisms as a type of acronyms. But even if it didn’t, your comment would still be unhelpful pedantry.
    
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- Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Abbreviate using the first and then any choice of following letter that differentiates it from the other possibilities in a specific group: AL, AR, AK, AZ… MA, ME, MD, MI, MN, MS, MO, MT… WA, WI, WV, WY!
  
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  - Wifimuffins@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Well tbf those are post codes designed by the postal service to represent states. I wouldn’t really count it as a naturally developed abbreviation like the ones above, it’s no different from .fr, .es, .co.uk, etc.
    
    The abbreviations for states used before the two-letter ones, however, are much weirder! E.g. Penna. for Pennsylvania
    
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- ValiantDust@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  
  Abbreviate keeping the first and some random later consonants (and sometimes consonants that aren’t in the word at all) without using punctuation: Dr, Mr, Ms, Mrs
  
  I think it’s usually the first letter(s) and the last letter(s). In older English handwritings I’ve come across M.ʳ etc. So I think that’s were those came from.
  
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  - uniqueid198x@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    In the Speedwriting shorthand system, developed in 1924 for use with typewriter, / Is used to denote omitted sylables, so ‘with’ becomes w/ and ‘without’ becomes w/o. Here is a pretty deep guide on the precepts of Speedwriting:
    
    www.reddit.com/r/Classic_Speedwriting/…/list108/
    
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- Etterra@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Except Dr., Mr., ie., etc. use a period.
  
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  - squaresinger@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Both versions exist: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_(title)#Abbreviati…
    
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- Trex202@lemmy.one ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  What about acronyms and initialization?
  
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HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
As others said, with as w/ was around as part of secretarial shorthand, which got taught to most people keeping corporate documentation and it stuck.

There are a lot of abbreviations like that in the English language that came from abbreviations in written form due to the media in was written in, whether it was newspapers, telegraph, handwritten shorthand, or computer based. It may not make sense because English isn’t a language designed to make sense; it isn’t even designed.

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- yata@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  
  It may not make sense because English isn’t a language designed to make sense; it isn’t even designed.
  
  To be fair, no living language is.
  
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  - OrteilGenou@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    French is heavily managed by the Académie, I guess it depends how you interpret “designed”. English is a much freer language that morphs and absorbs terms from many languages.
    
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- Zyratoxx@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Thank you for your answer mate :D
  
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mysoulishome@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Pretty sure it started w/your mom

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- GrayBackgroundMusic@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  
  w/your mom
  
  If we’re abbreviating things: w/ur mom
  
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- Zyratoxx@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  My mom ‘s so poor we need to save letters :’)
  
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milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Some various answers here; but for me, it came from w/o as a shorthand for ‘without’, then I started sometimes writing w/ for ‘with’ and wondering if that’s okay!

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- Rentlar@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  I’m not a linguist, but to me, langauge is fluid, in that it’s fine to use it any way you want, so long as the people involved can interpret it as intended.
  
  Which means when you write a note in shorthand for yourself, so long as you can come back to it and decipher it at whatever point you need it then it’s fine.
  
  If someone were to happen to come across it then there is a concern that they may interpret it wrong. As a silly example: If “I will fuck your mom” was your code for “I will pick up milk and eggs from the grocery store”, you can see how people (which could include you later) can interpret your message incorrectly, and you should pick a better shorthand in that case.
  
  When communicating with others you’ll have contexts of what kind of things are relevant, like PoS may mean different things if you are talking to a store manager vs. your buddy, you have to be sure your listener or reader gets the correct version.
  
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  - MostlyLazy@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    I wish I could upvote this more! Language is a living tool. Constant change in humanity requires communication tools that keep up.
    
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  - Zyratoxx@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Can’t agree more :D
    
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- 31415926535@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  My mother was a legal secretary, so she taught me shorthand when I was a kid. W/o was included in those teachings.
  
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Siegfried@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
In spanish we use the same abbreviation: c/ for “with” ans s/ for “without”

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- Zyratoxx@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Til :D
  
  Thanks for that reply :D
  
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ekky43@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
w/ appears to have origin in the food industry some 70 years ago (according to this question).

To me it makes sense, as I first encountered it in video games where abbreviations and text-saving-slang are commonplace. Furthermore, while abbreviations usually have multiple letters, single letter abbreviations can quickly become confusing, so I belive that this is the reason for putting a slash behind it, or possibly a bar above it.

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- V17@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  
  RANT: While I know that language changes all the time, I find it very unfortunate that this little fellow o/ and possibly his slightly more formal friend o7 have become synonymous with “nazi salute”. First off, it’s the wrong arm! And second off, what do you have against “man waving” and “man saluting”?
  
  Have they really? Never seen o7 used that way, with o/ it's more understandable, but since one can easily just use \o (or use an actual unicode swastika) I just don't see it getting that controversial. Seems even less known than the triple parentheses thing, which is something that most people who don't spend their lives on the internet never heard about.
  
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- Magickmaster@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  First time hearing o7 as ‘nazi salute’, I only know it as a ‘military/captain’s salute’ out of Eve Online, Elite and some milsim games
  
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- HerbalGamer@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  
  RANT: While I know that language changes all the time, I find it very unfortunate that this little fellow o/ and possibly his slightly more formal friend o7 have become synonymous with “nazi heil”. First off, it’s the wrong arm! And second off, what do you have against “man waving” and “man saluting”.
  
  Never heard that but thanks for reporting o7
  
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  - ekky43@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Perhaps (hopefully) i just encountered some folks who just assumed something, and that it’s not actually becoming a trend.
    
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- Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  
  It must be very confusing for someone who uses this newer definition of o/ to visit the Elite:Dangerous forums.
  
  EVE online players have done the o7 salute for decades. And while I’ll gladly admit that every single longtime EVE player is at least something of an asshole (it’s a requirement to really enjoy the game) I doubt the majority are cryptofascists.
  
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- taaz@biglemmowski.win ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Poor o/ and o7
  
  I am never stopping using these.
  
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  - bilboswaggings@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    o7 is pretty popular on twitch, since you can use it in any chat without having a subscription
    
    So it isn’t going anywhere yet
    
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- algorithmae@lemmy.one ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  o/ is a wave, o7 is a salute of respect
  
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- Zyratoxx@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Oh alright, thanks for your input. I never actually saw anyone using o/ and o7 but I wouldn’t have thought of them as nazi code. ^^
  
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ReluctantMuskrat@lemmy.world ⁨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.

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- Zyratoxx@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Oh, another interesting take. Tysm for that reply :D
  
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teuto@lemmy.teuto.icu ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Just wait until you encounter morse code abbreviations, some of which are still used in some industries. Like the wonderful X abbreviations, such as:

Wx - weather

Mx - maintainence

Tx/Rx - transmit/receive

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- Hegar@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Hx, Rx, Tx are history, prescription and treatment in medical jargon
  
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  - GentlemanLoser@ttrpg.network ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Dx too
    
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- ladytaters@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Cx - customer is one I run into daily.
  
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- GrayBackgroundMusic@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  
  Tx/Rx - transmit/receive
  
  I work in radio electronics. I use these, too.
  
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- Zyratoxx@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Lol those are wild
  
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ghostdoggtv@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
It comes from the letter “w” as in, “with”

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ook_the_librarian@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I know this isn’t an answer on the topic of the history of abbreviations, but I found this page to have a useful list of abbreviations with the foreign speaker in mind.

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- UltraBlack@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  they forgot kys :(
  
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  - Agent641@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Kiss your stepsister?
    
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- cRazi_man@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  
  FIY For your information
  
  😆
  
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gedaliyah@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
No idea, but it might be connected with shorthand, which was a common and sophisticated note-taking technique that allowed people, mostly secretaries in business, to write as fast as talking.

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rhythmisaprancer@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I use c̅ for with and s̅ for without, these may make more sense for you depending on your native tongue. They are medical shorthand.

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solivine@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
If that annoys you, never get into advanced maths. There’s arbitrary symbols that make no sense like 3 dots in a triangle means therefore. An upside down capital A means for all.

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bunnyfc@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Back when business was done entirely by paper, you'd have catalogues, books full of tables of things you could order with their prices. You have limited space for printing item names and those abbreviations were used there (e.g. in the 1920s).

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Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Never understood the need to abbreviate a random 4 letter word anyways

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southsamurai@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
People have needed quick notations for as long as language has been written. While I’m not going digging for links because fuck that shit for a casual comment, it remains true in every form of writing around the world that I’ve read about (obviously, I can’t read them all, and the few I can I don’t read well, but that’s why linguists get paid to do it for a living).

There are numerous symbols that represent entire words in writing. $, &, @,®,©,™, and that’s just the few my on screen keyboard makes easy.

The / is very commonly used to denote that the rest of a word has been “slashed” off of the previous section. It is intuitive to a degree in that it has been used for that in multiple places independently. Using a single symbol for that is very common.

It happening with with is just the most common example that most people will run into. Moreover, it’s typically applied in situations where the expected readers will be aware of that shorthand.

As an example, one of the nursing homes I worked at used a letter slash system for a lot of the common tasks we’d perform on our big whiteboard. You’d have room numbers and letters (for two bed rooms), with a grid. If you gave the patient their shower, you’d note s/. Bed bath would be b/. Meals were denoted with the first letter and slash except breakfast, which got m/ for morning (because b was already taken).

Now, we used lower case for tasks and upper case for initials as well, so that you could come up between rooms, make the note, and sign it in just seconds. When you’re taking care of 30+ patients per hall, those seconds are mammas valuable.

The w/ notation has been used for hundreds of years that I know of. I saw copies of colonial era logs that used it, and they went back to the 1600s iirc.

But, let’s give another example to help you get that it’s really no different from another word that happens to mean the same thing as with. If I say something is big, you’ve probably seen the word before, right? Picking up English as a second language usually means starting with smaller adjectives.

But, there’s other words that mean the same thing, or the same thing at a different scale large means the same as big. Huge means the same basic thing, but is typically used to mean “very big”. So, huge is a kind of shorthand too, in use. But until you encounter it the first time, it’s no more intuitive than big.

Then, the glory of English means we get all kinds of surplus words. Gargantuan, brobdingnagian, massive, they all mean that something is very big.

So, just think of w/ as a very small word that happens to share a single letter with the word with, and you simply hadn’t run across it. Nobody has the entirety of English in their heads, even vocabulary geeks. We all eventually run across something new to us, though the longer you read in English, the less often it occurs.

Now, why the slash? As opposed to some other symbol like -, :, or whatever. Think about writing with a stylus, brush, or quill pen. Dots and slashes are the easiest things to write, and are thus the fastest.

If you’re on a dock, scribbling down the load that’s coming in, you need that speed. When you’re keeping log books of any kind, you need to minimize hand strain, so fewer symbols means less strain.

W/ is the OMG or lol of more important things. It’s just another way of saving space and/or time

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Jeanschyso@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
University shortcut. When you have to take notes on paper so damn fast, you develop techniques. Those techniques get shared around. That’s how it was explained to me.

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ayth@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Writing by hand it’s fast, and visually creates a space to answer “with what?”

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lapislazuli@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I’m just adding an additional source, because I just recently read about this way of using the forward slash to create abbreviations. English Language & Usage has a good post on Stackexchange.

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jopepa@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I’m not an epidemiologists but I think they just took the o off of w/o

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