Grammar girl here.

A couple of weeks ago Anne Cursan, an English professor at the University of Michigan, wrote

an article about her English students this term, who report using the word slash in a completely

new way as a conjunction or maybe even a conjunctive adverb.

Here's an example from one of Cursan's students.

Finishing them right now, slash if I don't finish them now, they'll be done in first

hour tomorrow.

In that example, you could conceivably replace slash with Anne or but, making slash the

equivalent of a conjunction, or you could replace slash with however, making slash the equivalent

of a conjunctive adverb.

Finishing them right now, however, if I don't finish them now, they'll be done in first

hour tomorrow.

Although I hadn't heard this used before, it's not entirely new.

Cursan reports that one of her students had examples from 2010 and a language log post

from 2010 also discussed this new use.

A comment on that post also written in 2010 by Jeremy Merrill gives this example.

Objectivity is stupid, slash, there's no such thing.

And a commenter named David provided an example in 2010 of slash being used to coordinate

two clauses in Swedish.

He translated it like this, instead concentrate on pretty jewelry.

The finest pieces are of course the ones I've made.

Slash, I've made the ugliest ones since I don't like to follow fashion too much and make

...