If you think about cursive writing (or an italic font, based on the cursive writing), the names are pretty straightforward. All letters in cursive and italic a

If you think about cursive writing (or an italic font, based on the cursive writing), the names are pretty straightforward. All letters in cursive and italic are slanted to the right. Iceland becomes Iceland, with top part of each letter going right and bottom part going left. So, if you just wanted to write a slash in cursive, you'd end up with /. That's just a normal slash, a result of writing a line according to the general direction of the writing. And the slash that defies the general direction of the writing is 'backslash'. For this, you have to move your hand back from your normal writing position.