Tilde
The tilde, is a grapheme with several uses. The name of the character came into English from Spanish and from Portuguese, which in turn came from the Latin ', meaning "title" or "superscription".
The reason for the name was that it was originally written over an omitted letter or several letters as a scribal abbreviation, or "mark of suspension" and "mark of contraction", shown as a straight line when used with capitals. Thus, the commonly used words Anno Domini were frequently abbreviated to Ao Dñi, with an elevated terminal with a suspension mark placed over the "n". Such a mark could denote the omission of one letter or several letters. This saved on the expense of the scribe's labour and the cost of vellum and ink. Medieval European charters written in Latin are largely made up of such abbreviated words with suspension marks and other abbreviations; only uncommon words were given in full.
The tilde has since been applied to a number of other uses as a diacritic mark or a character in its own right. These are encoded in Unicode with [|many precomposed characters] as well as individually at and, and there are [|additional similar characters] for different roles. In lexicography, the latter kind of tilde and the swung dash''',, are used in dictionaries to indicate the omission of the entry word.
History
Use by medieval scribes
The text of the Domesday Book of 1086, relating for example, to the manor of Molland in Devon, is highly abbreviated as indicated by numerous tildes. The text with abbreviations expanded is as follows:Role of mechanical typewriters
The incorporation of the tilde into ASCII is a direct result of its appearance as a distinct character on mechanical typewriters in the late nineteenth century. When all character sets were pieces of metal permanently installed, and number of characters much more limited than in typography, the question of which languages and markets required which characters was an important one. Any good typewriter store had a catalog of alternative keyboards that could be specified for machines ordered from the factory.At that time, the tilde was used only in Spanish and Portuguese typewriters. In Modern Spanish, the tilde is used only with and. Both were conveniently assigned to a single mechanical typebar, which sacrificed a key that was felt to be less important, usually the — key.
Portuguese, however, uses not but for the same phoneme. It uses the tilde on the vowels and. So as not to sacrifice two of the tightly limited keys to, the decision was made to make the a separate "dead" character in which the carriage holding the paper did not move after the symbol was typed. When the 'normal' character was typed, it is printed under the previously-typed tilde, creating the desired accented character..
On mechanical typewriters, Spanish keyboards already had a dead key for the acute accent, used over any vowel and the dieresis, used only over. The same technology was adopted to create a dead key mechanism for a Portuguese keyboard so the was born as a typographical character to be overstruck with and. Thus, which did not exist previously as a type or hot-lead printing character, came to exist as a distinct grapheme.
Connection to Spanish
As indicated by the etymological origin of the word "tilde" in English, this symbol has been closely associated with the Spanish language. The connection stems from the use of the tilde above the letter to form the letter in Spanish, a feature shared by only a few other languages, all historically connected to Spanish. This peculiarity can help non-native speakers quickly identify a text as being written in Spanish with little chance of error. In addition, most native speakers, although not all, use the word español to refer to their language. Particularly during the 1990s, Spanish-speaking intellectuals and news outlets demonstrated support for the language and the culture by defending this letter against globalisation and computerisation trends that threatened to remove it from keyboards and other standardised products and codes. The Instituto Cervantes, founded by Spain's government to promote the Spanish language internationally, chose as its logo a highly stylised with a large tilde. The 24-hour news channel CNN in the US later adopted a similar strategy on its existing logo for the launch of its Spanish-language version. And similarly to the National Basketball Association, the Spain men's national basketball team is nicknamed "ÑBA".In Spanish itself the word tilde is used more generally for diacritics, including the stress-marking acute accent. The diacritic is more commonly called virgulilla or la tilde de la eñe, and is not considered an accent mark in Spanish, but rather simply a part of the letter .
Usage
Common use
This symbol informally means "approximately", "about", or "around", such as "~30 minutes before", meaning "approximately 30 minutes before". It can mean "similar to", including "of the same order of magnitude as", such as: "" meaning that and are of the same order of magnitude. Another approximation symbol is the double tilde, meaning "approximately equal to". The tilde is also used to indicate congruence of shapes by placing it over an symbol, thus:. In the computing field, especially in Unix-based systems, the tilde indicates the user's home directory.In more recent digital usage, tildes on either side of a word or phrase have sometimes come to convey a particular tone that "let the enclosed words perform both sincerity and irony", which can pre-emptively defuse a negative reaction. For example, BuzzFeed journalist Joseph Bernstein interprets the tildes in the following tweet:
as a way of making it clear that both the author and reader are aware that the enclosed phrase – "spirit of the season" – "is cliche and we know this quality is beneath our author, and we don't want you to think our author is a cliche person generally".
Diacritical use
In some languages, the tilde is a diacritic mark placed over a letter to indicate a change in its pronunciation:Pitch
The tilde was first used in the polytonic orthography of Ancient Greek, as a variant of the circumflex, representing a rise in pitch followed by a return to standard pitch.Abbreviation
Nasalization
It is also as a small that the tilde originated when written above other letters, marking a Latin which had been elided in old Galician-Portuguese. In modern Portuguese it indicates nasalization of the base vowel: mão "hand", from Lat. manu-; razões "reasons", from Lat. rationes. This usage has been adopted in the orthographies of several native languages of South America, such as Guarani and Nheengatu, as well as in the International Phonetic Alphabet and many other phonetic alphabets. For example, is the IPA transcription of the pronunciation of the French place-name Lyon.In Breton, the symbol after a vowel means that the letter serves only to give the vowel a nasalised pronunciation, without being itself pronounced, as it normally is. For example, gives the pronunciation whereas gives.
In the DMG romanization of Tunisian Arabic, the tilde is used for nasal vowels õ and ṏ.
Palatal n
The tilded developed from the digraph in Spanish. In this language, is considered a separate letter called eñe, rather than a letter-diacritic combination; it is placed in Spanish dictionaries between the letters and. In Spanish, the word tilde actually refers to diacritics in general, e.g. the acute accent in José, while the diacritic in is called "virgulilla". Current languages in which the tilded is used for the palatal nasal consonant include:- Asturian
- Basque
- Chamorro
- Filipino
- Galician
- Guaraní
- Iñupiaq
- Mapudungun
- Papiamento
- Quechua
- Spanish
- Tetum
- Aymara
- Wolof
Tone
International Phonetic Alphabet
In phonetics, a tilde is used as a diacritic that is placed above a letter, below it or superimposed onto the middle of it:- A tilde above a letter indicates nasalization, e.g..
- A tilde superimposed onto the middle of a letter indicates velarization or pharyngealization, e.g.. If no precomposed Unicode character exists, the Unicode character can be used to generate one.
- A tilde below a letter indicates laryngealisation, e.g.. If no precomposed Unicode character exists, the Unicode character can be used to generate one.
Letter extension
Other uses
Some languages and alphabets use the tilde for other purposes:- Arabic script: A symbol resembling the tilde is used over the letter to become , denoting a long sound.
- Guaraní: The tilded stands for the velar nasal consonant. Also, the tilded stands for the nasalized upper central rounded vowel. Munduruku, Parintintín, and two older spellings of Filipino words also use.
- Syriac script: A tilde under the letter Kaph represents a sound, transliterated as ch or č.
- Estonian uses the tilde above the letter o to indicate the vowel, a rare sound among languages.
- Unicode has a combining vertical tilde character:. It is used to indicate middle tone in linguistic transcription of certain dialects of the Lithuanian language.
Precomposed Unicode characters
| Letter | Code point | Name |
| Ẵ | U+1EB4 | LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH BREVE AND TILDE |
| ẵ | U+1EB5 | LATIN SMALL LETTER A WITH BREVE AND TILDE |
| Ẫ | U+1EAA | LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH CIRCUMFLEX AND TILDE |
| ẫ | U+1EAB | LATIN SMALL LETTER A WITH CIRCUMFLEX AND TILDE |
| Ã | U+00C3 | LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH TILDE |
| ã | U+00E3 | LATIN SMALL LETTER A WITH TILDE |
| ᵬ | U+1D6C | LATIN SMALL LETTER B WITH MIDDLE TILDE |
| ᵭ | U+1D6D | LATIN SMALL LETTER D WITH MIDDLE TILDE |
| Ễ | U+1EC4 | LATIN CAPITAL LETTER E WITH CIRCUMFLEX AND TILDE |
| ễ | U+1EC5 | LATIN SMALL LETTER E WITH CIRCUMFLEX AND TILDE |
| Ḛ | U+1E1A | LATIN CAPITAL LETTER E WITH TILDE BELOW |
| ḛ | U+1E1B | LATIN SMALL LETTER E WITH TILDE BELOW |
| Ẽ | U+1EBC | LATIN CAPITAL LETTER E WITH TILDE |
| ẽ | U+1EBD | LATIN SMALL LETTER E WITH TILDE |
| ᵮ | U+1D6E | LATIN SMALL LETTER F WITH MIDDLE TILDE |
| Ḭ | U+1E2C | LATIN CAPITAL LETTER I WITH TILDE BELOW |
| ḭ | U+1E2D | LATIN SMALL LETTER I WITH TILDE BELOW |
| Ĩ | U+0128 | LATIN CAPITAL LETTER I WITH TILDE |
| ĩ | U+0129 | LATIN SMALL LETTER I WITH TILDE |
| Ɫ | U+2C62 | LATIN CAPITAL LETTER L WITH MIDDLE TILDE |
| ɫ | U+026B | LATIN SMALL LETTER L WITH MIDDLE TILDE |
| ꭞ | U+AB5E | MODIFIER LETTER SMALL L WITH MIDDLE TILDE |
| ꬸ | U+AB38 | LATIN SMALL LETTER L WITH DOUBLE MIDDLE TILDE |
| ◌ᷬ | U+1DEC | COMBINING LATIN SMALL LETTER L WITH DOUBLE MIDDLE TILDE |
| ᵯ | U+1D6F | LATIN SMALL LETTER M WITH MIDDLE TILDE |
| ᵰ | U+1D70 | LATIN SMALL LETTER N WITH MIDDLE TILDE |
| Ñ | U+00D1 | LATIN CAPITAL LETTER N WITH TILDE |
| ñ | U+00F1 | LATIN SMALL LETTER N WITH TILDE |
| Ỗ | U+1ED6 | LATIN CAPITAL LETTER O WITH CIRCUMFLEX AND TILDE |
| ỗ | U+1ED7 | LATIN SMALL LETTER O WITH CIRCUMFLEX AND TILDE |
| Ỡ | U+1EE0 | LATIN CAPITAL LETTER O WITH HORN AND TILDE |
| ỡ | U+1EE1 | LATIN SMALL LETTER O WITH HORN AND TILDE |
| Ṍ | U+1E4C | LATIN CAPITAL LETTER O WITH TILDE AND ACUTE |
| ṍ | U+1E4D | LATIN SMALL LETTER O WITH TILDE AND ACUTE |
| Ṏ | U+1E4E | LATIN CAPITAL LETTER O WITH TILDE AND DIAERESIS |
| ṏ | U+1E4F | LATIN SMALL LETTER O WITH TILDE AND DIAERESIS |
| Ȭ | U+022C | LATIN CAPITAL LETTER O WITH TILDE AND MACRON |
| ȭ | U+022D | LATIN SMALL LETTER O WITH TILDE AND MACRON |
| Õ | U+00D5 | LATIN CAPITAL LETTER O WITH TILDE |
| õ | U+00F5 | LATIN SMALL LETTER O WITH TILDE |
| ᵱ | U+1D71 | LATIN SMALL LETTER P WITH MIDDLE TILDE |
| ᵳ | U+1D73 | LATIN SMALL LETTER R WITH FISHHOOK AND MIDDLE TILDE |
| ᵲ | U+1D72 | LATIN SMALL LETTER R WITH MIDDLE TILDE |
| ꭨ | U+AB68 | LATIN SMALL LETTER TURNED R WITH MIDDLE TILDE |
| ᵴ | U+1D74 | LATIN SMALL LETTER S WITH MIDDLE TILDE |
| ᵵ | U+1D75 | LATIN SMALL LETTER T WITH MIDDLE TILDE |
| Ữ | U+1EEE | LATIN CAPITAL LETTER U WITH HORN AND TILDE |
| ữ | U+1EEF | LATIN SMALL LETTER U WITH HORN AND TILDE |
| Ṹ | U+1E78 | LATIN CAPITAL LETTER U WITH TILDE AND ACUTE |
| ṹ | U+1E79 | LATIN SMALL LETTER U WITH TILDE AND ACUTE |
| Ṵ | U+1E74 | LATIN CAPITAL LETTER U WITH TILDE BELOW |
| ṵ | U+1E75 | LATIN SMALL LETTER U WITH TILDE BELOW |
| Ũ | U+0168 | LATIN CAPITAL LETTER U WITH TILDE |
| ũ | U+0169 | LATIN SMALL LETTER U WITH TILDE |
| Ṽ | U+1E7C | LATIN CAPITAL LETTER V WITH TILDE |
| ṽ | U+1E7D | LATIN SMALL LETTER V WITH TILDE |
| Ỹ | U+1EF8 | LATIN CAPITAL LETTER Y WITH TILDE |
| ỹ | U+1EF9 | LATIN SMALL LETTER Y WITH TILDE |
| ᵶ | U+1D76 | LATIN SMALL LETTER Z WITH MIDDLE TILDE |
Punctuation
The tilde is used in various ways in punctuation:Range
In some languages, a tilde-like wavy dash may be used as punctuation between two numbers, to indicate a range rather than subtraction or a hyphenated number. For example, "12~15" means "12 to 15", "~3" means "up to three", and "100~" means "100 and greater". Japanese and other East Asian languages almost always use this convention, but it is often done for clarity in some other languages as well. Chinese uses the wavy dash and full-width em dash interchangeably for this purpose. In English, the tilde is often used to express ranges and model numbers in electronics, but rarely in formal grammar or in type-set documents, as a wavy dash preceding a number sometimes represents an approximation.Approximation
Before a number the tilde can mean 'approximately; '~42' means 'approximately 42'. When used with currency symbols that precede the number, the tilde precedes the symbol, thus for example '~$10' means 'about ten dollars'.The symbols ≈ and ≅ are among the other symbols used to express approximation.
Japanese
The wave dash is used for various purposes in Japanese, including to denote ranges of numbers, in place of dashes or brackets, and to indicate origin. The wave dash is also used to separate a title and a subtitle in the same line, as a colon is used in English.When used in conversations via email or instant messenger it may be used as a sarcasm mark.
The sign is used as a replacement for the chouon, katakana character, in Japanese, extending the final syllable.
Unicode and Shift JIS encoding of wave dash
In practice the full-width tilde, Unicode U+FF5E, is often used instead of the wave dash, Unicode U+301C, because the Shift JIS code for the wave dash, 0x8160, which is supposed to be mapped to U+301C, is instead mapped to U+FF5E in Windows code page 932, a widely used extension of Shift JIS.This avoided a shape definition error in the Unicode code charts: the wave dash reference glyph in JIS / Shift JIS matches the Unicode reference glyph for U+FF5E, while the reference glyph for U+301C was reflected, incorrectly, when Unicode imported the JIS wave dash. In other platforms such as the classic Mac OS and macOS, 0x8160 is correctly mapped to U+301C. It is generally difficult, if not impossible, for users of Japanese Windows to type U+301C, especially in legacy, non-Unicode applications.
A similar situation exists regarding the Korean KS X 1001 character set, in which Microsoft maps the EUC-KR or UHC code for the wave dash to U+223C, while IBM and Apple map it to U+301C. Microsoft also uses U+FF5E to map the KS X 1001 raised tilde, while Apple uses U+02DC.
The current Unicode reference glyph for U+301C has been corrected to match the JIS standard in response to a 2014 proposal, which noted that while the existing Unicode reference glyph had been matched by fonts from the discontinued Windows XP, all other major platforms including later versions of Microsoft Windows shipped with fonts matching the JIS reference glyph for U+301C.
The JIS / Shift JIS wave dash is still formally mapped to U+301C as of JIS X 0213, whereas the WHATWG Encoding Standard used by HTML5 follows Microsoft in mapping 0x8160 to U+FF5E. These two code points have a similar or identical glyph in several fonts, reducing the confusion and incompatibility.
Mathematics
As a unary operator
A tilde in front of a single quantity can mean "approximately", "about" or "of the same order of magnitude as."In written mathematical logic, the tilde represents negation: "~p" means "not p", where "p" is a proposition. Modern use often replaces the tilde with the negation symbol for this purpose, to avoid confusion with equivalence relations.
As a relational operator
In mathematics, the tilde operator, sometimes called "twiddle", is often used to denote an equivalence relation between two objects. Thus "" means " is equivalent to ". It is a weaker statement than stating that equals. The expression "" is sometimes read aloud as " twiddles ", perhaps as an analogue to the verbal expression of "".The tilde can indicate approximate equality in a variety of ways. It can be used to denote the asymptotic equality of two functions. For example, means that.
A tilde is also used to indicate "approximately equal to". This usage probably developed as a typed alternative to the :Image:Libra.svg|libra symbol used for the same purpose in written mathematics, which is an equal sign with the upper bar replaced by a bar with an upward hump, bump, or loop in the middle or, sometimes, a tilde. The symbol "≈" is also used for this purpose.
In physics and astronomy, a tilde can be used between two expressions to state that the two are of the same order of magnitude.
In statistics and probability theory, the tilde means "is distributed as"; see random variable.
A tilde can also be used to represent geometric similarity. A triple tilde is often used to show congruence, an equivalence relation in geometry.
As an accent
The symbol "" is pronounced as "eff tilde" or, informally, as "eff twiddle" or, in American English, "eff wiggle". This can be used to denote the Fourier transform of f, or a lift of f, and can have a variety of other meanings depending on the context.A tilde placed below a letter in mathematics can represent a vector quantity.
In statistics and probability theory, a tilde placed on top of a variable is sometimes used to represent the median of that variable; thus would indicate the median of the variable. A tilde over the letter n is sometimes used to indicate the harmonic mean.
In machine learning, a tilde may represent a candidate value for a cell state in GRUs or LSTM units.
Physics
Often in physics, one can consider an equilibrium solution to an equation, and then a perturbation to that equilibrium. For the variables in the original equation a substitution can be made, where is the equilibrium part and is the perturbed part.A tilde is also used in particle physics to denote the hypothetical supersymmetric partner. For example, an electron is referred to by the letter e, and its superpartner the selectron is written ẽ.
Economics
For relations involving preference, economists sometimes use the tilde to represent indifference between two or more bundles of goods. For example, to say that a consumer is indifferent between bundles x and y, an economist would write x ~ y.Electronics
It can approximate the sine wave symbol, which is used in electronics to indicate alternating current, in place of +, −, or ⎓ for direct current.Linguistics
The tilde may indicate alternating allomorphs or morphological alternation, as in for kneel~knelt.Computing
Directories and URLs
On Unix-like operating systems, tilde normally indicates the current user's home directory. For example, if the current user's home directory is, then the command is equivalent to,, or. This convention derives from the Lear-Siegler ADM-3A terminal in common use during the 1970s, which happened to have the tilde symbol and the word "Home" on the same key. When prepended to a particular username, the tilde indicates that user's home directory.Used in URLs on the World Wide Web, it often denotes a personal website on a Unix-based server. For example, might be the personal web site of John Doe. This mimics the Unix shell usage of the tilde. However, when accessed from the web, file access is usually directed to a subdirectory in the user's home directory, such as or.
In URLs, the characters may substitute for tilde if an input device lacks a tilde key. Thus, and will behave in the same manner.
Computer languages
The tilde is used in the AWK programming language as part of the pattern match operators for regular expressions:variable ~ /regex/returns true if the variable is matched.variable !~ /regex/returns false if the variable is matched.
=~, was adopted in Perl, and this semi-standardization has led to the use of these operators in other programming languages, such as Ruby or the SQL variant of the database PostgreSQL.In APL and MATLAB, tilde represents the monadic logical function NOT, and in APL it additionally represents the dyadic multiset function without.
In the C, C++ and C# programming languages, the tilde character is used as bitwise NOT operator, following the notation in logic. In C++ and C#, the tilde is also used as the first character in a class's method name to indicate a destructor – a special method which is called at the end of the object's life. The MySQL database also use tilde as bitwise invert.
In ASP.NET application tilde is used as a shortcut to the root of the application's virtual directory.
In the CSS stylesheet language, the tilde is used for the indirect adjacent combinator as part of a selector.
In the D programming language, the tilde is used as an array concatenation operator, as well as to indicate an object destructor and bitwise not operator. Tilde operator can be overloaded for user types, and binary tilde operator is mostly used to merging two objects, or adding some objects to set of objects. It was introduced because plus operator can have different meaning in many situations. For example, what to do with "120" + "14" ? Is this a string "134", or "12014" or something else? D disallows + operator for arrays, and provides separate operator for concatenation.
In Eiffel, the tilde is used for object comparison. If a and b denote objects, the boolean expression a ~ b has value true if and only if these objects are equal, as defined by the applicable version of the library routine is_equal, which by default denotes field-by-field object equality but can be redefined in any class to support a specific notion of equality. If a and b are references, the object equality expression a ~ b is to be contrasted with a = b which denotes reference equality. Unlike the call a.is_equal, the expression a ~ b is type-safe even in the presence of covariance.
In the Apache Groovy programming language the tilde character is used as an operator mapped to the bitwiseNegate method. Given a String the method will produce a java.util.regex.Pattern. Given an integer it will negate the integer bitwise like in different C variants.
=~ and ~ can in Groovy be used to match a regular expression.In Haskell, the tilde is used in type constraints to indicate type equality. Also, in pattern-matching, the tilde is used to indicate a lazy pattern match.
In the Inform programming language, the tilde is used to indicate a quotation mark inside a quoted string.
In "text mode" of the LaTeX typesetting language a tilde diacritic can be obtained using, e.g.,
\~, yielding "ñ". A stand-alone tilde can be obtained by using \textasciitilde or \string~.In "math mode" a tilde diacritic can be written as, e.g.,
\tilde. For a wider tilde \widetilde can be used. The \sim command produce a tilde-like binary relation symbol that is often used in mathematical expressions, and the double-tilde ≈ is obtained with \approx. The url package also supports entering tildes directly, e.g., \url In both text and math mode, a tilde on its own renders a white space with no line breaking.
In MediaWiki syntax, four tildes are used as a shortcut for a user's signature.
In Common Lisp, the tilde is used as the prefix for format specifiers in format strings.
In Max/MSP, a tilde is used to denote objects that process at the computer's sampling rate, i.e. mainly those that deal with sound.
In Standard ML, the tilde is used as the prefix for negative numbers and as the unary negation operator.
In OCaml, the tilde is used to specify the label for a labeled parameter.
In Microsoft's SQL Server Transact-SQL language, the tilde is a unary Bitwise NOT operator.
In JavaScript, the tilde is used as a unary bitwise complement operation. Because JavaScript internally uses floats and the bitwise complement only works on integers, numbers are stripped of their decimal part before applying the operation. This has also given rise to using two tildes
~~number as a short syntax for a cast to integer. For positive numbers, this is equivalent to the mathematical floor function.In Object REXX, the twiddle is used as a "message send" symbol. For example,
Employee.name~lower would cause the lower method to act on the object Employee's name attribute, returning the result of the operation. ~~ returns the object that received the method rather than the result produced. Thus it can be used when the result need not be returned or when cascading methods are to be used. team~~insert~~insert~~insert would send multiple concurrent insert messages, thus invoking the insert method three consecutive times on the team object.Backup filenames
The dominant Unix convention for naming backup copies of files is appending a tilde to the original file name.It originated with the Emacs text editor and was adopted by many other editors and some command-line tools.
Emacs also introduced an elaborate numbered backup scheme, with files named, and so on. It didn't catch on, as the rise of version control software eliminates the need for this usage.
Microsoft filenames
The tilde was part of Microsoft's filename mangling scheme when it extended the FAT file system standard to support long filenames for Microsoft Windows. Programs written prior to this development could only access filenames in the so-called 8.3 format—the filenames consisted of a maximum of eight characters from a restricted character set, followed by a period, followed by three more characters. In order to permit these legacy programs to access files in the FAT file system, each file had to be given two names—one long, more descriptive one, and one that conformed to the 8.3 format. This was accomplished with a name-mangling scheme in which the first six characters of the filename are followed by a tilde and a digit. For example, "" might become "".The tilde symbol is also often used to prefix hidden temporary files that are created when a document is opened in Windows. For example, when a document "Document1.doc" is opened in Word, a file called "~$cument1.doc" is created in the same directory. This file contains information about which user has the file open, to prevent multiple users from attempting to change a document at the same time.
Other uses
use the tilde in various ways and sometimes call the symbol a squiggle, squiggly, or twiddle. According to the Jargon File, other synonyms sometimes used in programming include not, approx, wiggle, enyay and sqiggle. It is used in many languages as a binary inversion operator, swapping a number's binary 1's and 0's for example ~10 is equal to 5.In Raku, "
Juggling notation
In the juggling notation system Beatmap, tilde can be added to either "hand" in a pair of fields to say "cross the arms with this hand on top". Mills Mess is thus represented as *.Similar characters
There are many Unicode characters for tildes, symbols incorporating tildes, and characters visually similar to a tilde:| Character | Code point | Name | Comments |
| ~ | U+007E | TILDE | Same as keyboard tilde. In-line. |
| ˜ | U+02DC | SMALL TILDE | Raised but quite small. |
| ˷ | U+02F7 | MODIFIER LETTER LOW TILDE | |
| ◌̃ | U+0303 | COMBINING TILDE | |
| ◌̰ | U+0330 | COMBINING TILDE BELOW | Used in IPA to indicate creaky voice. |
| ◌̴ | U+0334 | COMBINING TILDE OVERLAY | Used in IPA to indicate velarization or pharyngealization. |
| ◌̾ | U+033E | COMBINING VERTICAL TILDE | |
| ◌͂ | U+0342 | COMBINING GREEK PERISPOMENI | Used as an Ancient Greek accent under the name "circumflex"; it can also be written as an inverted breve. |
| ◌͊ | U+034A | COMBINING NOT TILDE ABOVE | Raised, small, with slash through. |
| ◌͠◌ | U+0360 | COMBINING DOUBLE TILDE | |
| ◌֘ | U+0598 | HEBREW ACCENT ZARQA | Hebrew cantillation mark. |
| ◌֮ | U+05AE | HEBREW ACCENT ZINOR | Hebrew cantillation mark. |
| ◌᷉ | U+1DC9 | COMBINING ACUTE-GRAVE-ACUTE | Used in IPA as a tone mark. |
| ⁓ | U+2053 | SWUNG DASH | |
| ∼ | U+223C | TILDE OPERATOR | Used in mathematics. In-line. Ends not curved as much. |
| ∽ | U+223D | REVERSED TILDE | In some fonts it is the tilde's simple mirror image; others extend the tips to resemble a ᔕ, or an open ∞. |
| ∿ | U+223F | SINE WAVE | Used in electronics to indicate alternating current, in place of +, −, or ⎓ for direct current. |
| ≁ | U+2241 | NOT TILDE | |
| ≂ | U+2242 | MINUS TILDE | |
| ≃ | U+2243 | ASYMPTOTICALLY EQUAL TO | |
| ≄ | U+2244 | NOT ASYMPTOTICALLY EQUAL TO | |
| ≅ | U+2245 | APPROXIMATELY EQUAL TO | |
| ≆ | U+2246 | APPROXIMATELY BUT NOT ACTUALLY EQUAL TO | |
| ≇ | U+2247 | NEITHER APPROXIMATELY NOR ACTUALLY EQUAL TO | |
| ≈ | U+2248 | ALMOST EQUAL TO | |
| ≉ | U+2249 | NOT ALMOST EQUAL TO | |
| ≊ | U+224A | ALMOST EQUAL OR EQUAL TO | |
| ≋ | U+224B | TRIPLE TILDE | |
| ≌ | U+224C | ALL EQUAL TO | |
| ⋍ | U+22CD | REVERSED TILDE EQUALS | |
| ⍨ | U+2368 | APL FUNCTIONAL SYMBOL TILDE DIAERESIS | |
| ⍫ | U+236B | APL FUNCTIONAL SYMBOL DEL TILDE | |
| ⍭ | U+236D | APL FUNCTIONAL SYMBOL STILE TILDE | |
| ⍱ | U+2371 | APL FUNCTIONAL SYMBOL DOWN CARET TILDE | |
| ⍲ | U+2372 | APL FUNCTIONAL SYMBOL UP CARET TILDE | |
| ⥲ | U+2972 | TILDE OPERATOR ABOVE RIGHTWARDS ARROW | |
| ⥳ | U+2973 | LEFTWARDS ARROW ABOVE TILDE OPERATOR | |
| ⥴ | U+2974 | RIGHTWARDS ARROW ABOVE TILDE OPERATOR | |
| ⧤ | U+29E4 | EQUALS SIGN AND SLANTED PARALLEL WITH TILDE ABOVE | |
| ⨤ | U+2A24 | PLUS SIGN WITH TILDE ABOVE | |
| ⨦ | U+2A26 | PLUS SIGN WITH TILDE BELOW | |
| ⩪ | U+2A6A | TILDE OPERATOR WITH DOT ABOVE | |
| ⩫ | U+2A6B | TILDE OPERATOR WITH RISING DOTS | |
| ⩳ | U+2A73 | EQUALS SIGN ABOVE TILDE OPERATOR | |
| ⫇ | U+2AC7 | SUBSET OF ABOVE TILDE OPERATOR | |
| ⫈ | U+2AC8 | SUPERSET OF ABOVE TILDE OPERATOR | |
| ⫳ | U+2AF3 | PARALLEL WITH TILDE OPERATOR | |
| ⭁ | U+2B41 | REVERSE TILDE OPERATOR ABOVE LEFTWARDS ARROW | |
| ⭇ | U+2B47 | REVERSE TILDE OPERATOR ABOVE RIGHTWARDS ARROW | |
| ⭉ | U+2B49 | TILDE OPERATOR ABOVE LEFTWARDS ARROW | |
| ⭋ | U+2B4B | LEFTWARDS ARROW ABOVE REVERSE TILDE OPERATOR | |
| ⭌ | U+2B4C | RIGHTWARDS ARROW ABOVE REVERSE TILDE OPERATOR | |
| ⸛ | U+2E1B | TILDE WITH RING ABOVE | |
| ⸞ | U+2E1E | TILDE WITH DOT ABOVE | |
| ⸟ | U+2E1F | TILDE WITH DOT BELOW | |
| ⸯ | U+2E2F | VERTICAL TILDE | |
| 〜 | U+301C | WAVE DASH | Used in Japanese punctuation. |
| 〰 | U+3030 | WAVY DASH | |
| ◌︢ | U+FE22 | COMBINING DOUBLE TILDE LEFT HALF | |
| ◌︣ | U+FE23 | COMBINING DOUBLE TILDE RIGHT HALF | |
| ◌︩ | U+FE29 | COMBINING TILDE LEFT HALF BELOW | |
| ◌︪ | U+FE2A | COMBINING TILDE RIGHT HALF BELOW | |
| ﹋ | U+FE4B | WAVY OVERLINE | |
| ﹏ | U+FE4F | WAVY LOW LINE | |
| ～ | U+FF5E | FULLWIDTH TILDE | Em wide. In-line. Ends not curved much. |
| Tags | | U+E007E | TAG TILDE | Formatting tag control character. |
ASCII tilde (U+007E)
Most modern proportional fonts align the plain ASCII spacing tilde at the same level as dashes, or only slightly upper. This distinguishes it from the small tilde introduced with Windows-1252, which is always raised. But in some monospace fonts, especially used in text user interfaces, ASCII tilde character is raised too. This apparently is a legacy of typewriters, where pairs of similar spacing and combining characters relied on one glyph. Even in line printers' age character repertoires were often not large enough to distinguish between plain tilde, small tilde and combining tilde. Overprinting of a letter by the tilde was a working method of combining a letter.Keyboards
Where a tilde is on the keyboard depends on the computer's language settings according to the following chart. On many keyboards it is primarily available through a dead key that makes it possible to produce a variety of precomposed characters with the diacritic. In that case, a single tilde can typically be inserted with the dead key followed by the space bar, or alternatively by striking the dead key twice in a row.To insert a tilde with the dead key, it is often necessary to simultaneously hold down the Alt Gr key. With a Macintosh either of the Alt/Option keys function similarly.
In the US and European Windows systems, the Alt code for a single tilde is
126.| Keyboard | Insert a single tilde | Insert a precomposed character with tilde |
| Arabic | ||
| Croatian | + | |
| Czech | + | |
| Danish | followed by | followed by the relevant letter |
| Dvorak | followed by, or followed by | followed by the relevant letter, or followed by the relevant letter |
| English | ||
| English | ||
| English | followed by the relevant letter | |
| English | followed by the relevant letter | |
| Faroese | followed by | followed by the relevant letter |
| Finnish | followed by, or | followed by the relevant letter |
| French | followed by, or | followed by the relevant letter |
| French | followed by, or | followed by the relevant letter |
| French | followed by, or | followed by the relevant letter |
| Bépo | followed by, or | followed by the relevant letter |
| German | ||
| German | followed by, or | followed by the relevant letter |
| Hebrew | followed by the relevant letter | |
| Hindi | + the key to the left of | |
| Hungarian | + | |
| Icelandic | ||
| Italian | | |
| Norwegian | followed by, or On Mac:, or followed by. | followed by the relevant letter. On Mac: followed by the relevant letter. |
| Polish | followed by, or | The dead key is not generally used for inserting characters with tilde; when followed by |
| Portuguese | followed by | followed by the relevant letter |
| Slovak | + | |
| Spanish | followed by, or On Linux:, or followed by. On Mac:, or followed by. | followed by the relevant letter. followed by the relevant letter. On Mac: followed by the relevant letter. |
| Spanish | ||
| Swedish | followed by, or | followed by the relevant letter |
| Turkish | followed by, or | followed by the relevant letter |