Don’t use slashes

Apart from fractions, the slash has almost no good uses. “And/or” is classic legalese. In most cases, writers mean either “or” or “and.” But they don’t want to take the time to decide which they mean, so they push the job off on the reader. That makes their writing ambiguous. As an author, you should make the decision about what you mean. In the few cases—and there do seem to be very few—where you truly mean both, write out either X, or Y, or both.

Often when writers use slashes, a dash is more appropriate to join equal or like terms, as in “faculty-student ratio”.