The tilde () or , is a
grapheme
In linguistics, a grapheme is the smallest functional unit of a writing system.
The word ''grapheme'' is derived and the suffix ''-eme'' by analogy with ''phoneme'' and other names of emic units. The study of graphemes is called ''graphemics ...
with several uses. The name of the character came into English from
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
, which in turn came from the
Latin ''
titulus
Titulus, the Latin word for "title", "label" or "inscription" (plural ''tituli'', normally italicized), may or may not be italicized as a foreign word, and may refer to:
* ''Titulus'', or Titular church, one of a group of Early Christian churches ...
'', meaning "title" or "superscription". Its primary use is as a
diacritic
A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacritic ...
(accent) in combination with a base letter; but for historical reasons, it is also used in standalone form within a variety of contexts.
History
Use by medieval scribes
The tilde was originally written over an omitted letter or several letters as a
scribal abbreviation
Scribal abbreviations or sigla ( singular: siglum) are abbreviations used by ancient and medieval scribes writing in various languages, including Latin, Greek, Old English and Old Norse. In modern manuscript editing (substantive and mechan ...
, or "mark of suspension" and "mark of contraction", shown as a straight line when used with capitals. Thus, the commonly used words ''
Anno Domini
The terms (AD) and before Christ (BC) are used to label or number years in the Julian and Gregorian calendars. The term is Medieval Latin and means 'in the year of the Lord', but is often presented using "our Lord" instead of "the Lord", ...
'' were frequently abbreviated to ''A
o 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 labor 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 text of the
Domesday Book
Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manusc ...
of 1086, relating for example, to the
manor of Molland
The Manor of Molland was a medieval manor in North Devon, England. It was largely co-terminous with the existing parish of Molland, in which is situated the village of Molland. More accurately it consisted from the earliest times of two separ ...
in
Devon
Devon ( , historically known as Devonshire , ) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South West England. The most populous settlement in Devon is the city of Plymouth, followed by Devon's county town, the city of Exeter. Devon is a ...
(see adjacent picture), is highly
abbreviated
An abbreviation (from Latin ''brevis'', meaning ''short'') is a shortened form of a word or phrase, by any method. It may consist of a group of letters or words taken from the full version of the word or phrase; for example, the word ''abbrevia ...
as indicated by numerous tildes.

The text with abbreviations expanded is as follows:
Role of mechanical typewriters

On
typewriter
A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical machine for typing characters. Typically, a typewriter has an array of keys, and each one causes a different single character to be produced on paper by striking an inked ribbon selectivel ...
s designed for languages that routinely use
diacritic
A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacritic ...
s (accent marks), there are two possible solutions. Keys can be dedicated to
precomposed character
A precomposed character (alternatively composite character or decomposable character) is a Unicode entity that can also be defined as a sequence of one or more other characters. A precomposed character may typically represent a letter with a diacri ...
s or alternatively a
dead key
A dead key is a special kind of modifier key on a mechanical typewriter, or computer keyboard, that is typically used to attach a specific diacritic to a base letter. The dead key does not generate a (complete) character by itself, but modifies ...
mechanism can be provided. With the latter, a mark is made when a dead key is typed, but unlike normal keys, the paper carriage does not move on and thus the next letter to be typed is printed under that accent. Typewriters for
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
typically have a dedicated key for
Ñ/ñ but, as
Portuguese uses
Ã/ã and
Õ/õ, a single dead-key (rather than take two keys to dedicate) is the most practical solution.
The tilde symbol did not exist independently as a
movable type
Movable type (US English; moveable type in British English) is the system and technology of printing and typography that uses movable components to reproduce the elements of a document (usually individual alphanumeric characters or punctuation ...
or
hot-lead printing character since the
type case
A type case is a compartmentalized wooden box used to store movable type used in letterpress printing
Letterpress printing is a technique of relief printing. Using a printing press, the process allows many copies to be produced by repeat ...
s for Spanish or Portuguese would include
sort
Sort may refer to:
* Sorting, any process of arranging items in sequence or in sets
** Sorting algorithm, any algorithm for arranging elements in lists
** Sort (Unix), a Unix utility which sorts the lines of a file
** Sort (C++), a function in ...
s for the accented forms.
The centralized ASCII tilde
The first ASCII standard (X3.64-1963) did not have a tilde.
Like Portuguese and Spanish, the French, German and Scandinavian languages also needed symbols in excess of the basic 26 needed for English. The
ASA
ASA as an abbreviation or initialism may refer to:
Biology and medicine
* Accessible surface area of a biomolecule, accessible to a solvent
* Acetylsalicylic acid, aspirin
* Advanced surface ablation, refractive eye surgery
* Anterior spinal ...
worked with and through the
CCITT to internationalize the code-set, to meet the basic needs of at least the Western European languages.
Thus ISO646 was born (and the ASCII standard updated to X3.64-1967), providing the tilde and other symbols as optional characters.
ISO646 and ASCII incorporated many of the overprinting lower-case diacritics from typewriters, including tilde. Overprinting was intended to work by putting a
backspace code between the codes for letter and diacritic. However even at that time, mechanisms that could do this or any other overprinting were not widely available, did not work for capital letters, and were impossible on video displays, with the result that this concept failed to gain significant acceptance. Consequently, many of these free-standing diacritics (and the
underscore
An underscore, ; also called an underline, low line, or low dash; is a line drawn under a segment of text. In proofreading, underscoring is a convention that says "set this text in italic type", traditionally used on manuscript or typescript as ...
) were quickly reused by software as additional syntax, basically becoming new types of syntactic symbols that a programming language could use. As this usage became predominant,
type design
Type design is the art and process of designing typefaces. This involves drawing each letterform using a consistent style. The basic concepts and design variables are described below.
A typeface differs from other modes of graphic production s ...
gradually evolved so these diacritic characters became larger and more vertically centered, making them useless as overprinted diacritics but much easier to read as free-standing characters that had come to be used for entirely different and novel purposes. Most modern fonts align the plain ASCII "
spacing" (free-standing) tilde at the same level as
dash
The dash is a punctuation mark consisting of a long horizontal line. It is similar in appearance to the hyphen but is longer and sometimes higher from the baseline. The most common versions are the endash , generally longer than the hyphen b ...
es, or only slightly higher.
The free-standing tilde is at code 126 in ASCII, where it was inherited into Unicode as U+007E.
A similar shaped mark () is known in typography and
lexicography
Lexicography is the study of lexicons, and is divided into two separate academic disciplines. It is the art of compiling dictionaries.
* Practical lexicography is the art or craft of compiling, writing and editing dictionaries.
* Theoreti ...
as a
swung dash: these are used in dictionaries to indicate the omission of the entry word.
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 (different) letter in Spanish, a feature shared by only
a few other languages, most of which are 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 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
computer
A computer is a machine that can be programmed to Execution (computing), carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as C ...
isation trends that threatened to remove it from keyboards and other standardised products and codes. The
Instituto Cervantes
Instituto Cervantes (the Cervantes Institute) is a worldwide nonprofit organization created by the Spanish government in 1991. It is named after Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616), the author of ''Don Quixote'' and perhaps the most important figu ...
, 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
CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by ...
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 National Basketball Association (NBA) is a professional basketball league in North America. The league is composed of 30 teams (29 in the United States and 1 in Canada) and is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United ...
(NBA), the
Spain men's national basketball team is nicknamed "ÑBA".
In Spanish itself the word is used more generally for diacritics, including the stress-marking acute accent. The diacritic is more commonly called or , and is not considered an accent mark in Spanish, but rather simply a part of the letter (much like
the dot over makes an character that is familiar to readers of English).
Usage
Letters with tilde
This is a table of
precomposed letters with tilde:
A tilde diacritic can be added to almost any character by using a
combining tilde.
Common use in English
The
English language does not use the tilde as a diacritic, though it is used in some
loanword
A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because the ...
s. The standalone form of the symbol is used more widely. Informally,
it means
"approximately", "about", or "around", such as "~30 minutes before", meaning "''approximately'' 30 minutes before".
It may also 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/almost equal to".
The tilde is also used to indicate
congruence of shapes by placing it over an symbol, thus .
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
BuzzFeed, Inc. is an American Internet media, news and entertainment company with a focus on digital media. Based in New York City, BuzzFeed was founded in 2006 by Jonah Peretti and John S. Johnson III to focus on tracking viral content. K ...
journalist Joseph Bernstein interprets the tildes in the following
tweet:
:"in the ~ spirit of the season ~ will now link to some of the (imho) #Bestof2014 sports reads. if you hate nice things, mute that hashtag."
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
A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacritic ...
mark placed over a
letter
Letter, letters, or literature may refer to:
Characters typeface
* Letter (alphabet), a character representing one or more of the sounds used in speech; any of the symbols of an alphabet.
* Letterform, the graphic form of a letter of the alphabe ...
to indicate a change in its pronunciation:
Pitch
The tilde was firstly used in the
polytonic orthography
Greek orthography has used a variety of diacritics starting in the Hellenistic period. The more complex polytonic orthography ( el, πολυτονικό σύστημα γραφής, translit=polytonikó sýstīma grafī́s), which includes fi ...
of
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic peri ...
, as a variant of the
circumflex
The circumflex () is a diacritic in the Latin and Greek scripts that is also used in the written forms of many languages and in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from la, circumflexus "bent around" ...
, representing a rise in
pitch
Pitch may refer to:
Acoustic frequency
* Pitch (music), the perceived frequency of sound including "definite pitch" and "indefinite pitch"
** Absolute pitch or "perfect pitch"
** Pitch class, a set of all pitches that are a whole number of octav ...
followed by a return to standard pitch.
Abbreviation

Later, it was used to make
abbreviations
An abbreviation (from Latin ''brevis'', meaning ''short'') is a shortened form of a word or phrase, by any method. It may consist of a group of letters or words taken from the full version of the word or phrase; for example, the word ''abbrevi ...
in medieval
Latin documents. When an or followed a vowel, it was often omitted, and a tilde (physically, a small ) was placed over the preceding vowel to indicate the missing letter; this is the origin of the use of tilde to indicate nasalization (compare
the development of the umlaut as an abbreviation of .) The practice of using the tilde over a vowel to indicate omission of an or continued in printed books in
French
French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to France
** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents
** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with France ...
as a means of reducing text length until the 17th century. It was also used in
Portuguese and
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
.
The tilde was also used occasionally to make other abbreviations, such as over the letter , making ,
to signify the word ''que'' ("that").
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
In phonetics, nasalization (or nasalisation) is the production of a sound while the velum is lowered, so that some air escapes through the nose during the production of the sound by the mouth. An archetypal nasal sound is .
In the Internati ...
of the base vowel: "hand", from Lat. ''manu-''; "reasons", from Lat. . This usage has been adopted in the orthographies of several
native languages of South America, such as
Guarani and
Nheengatu
The Nheengatu language (Tupi: , nheengatu rionegrino: ''yẽgatu'', nheengatu tradicional: ''nhẽẽgatú'' e nheengatu tapajoawara: ''nheẽgatu''), often written Nhengatu, is an indigenous language of the Tupi-Guarani family, being then deri ...
, as well as in the
International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) 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
Tunisian Arabic, or simply Tunisian, is a set of dialects of Maghrebi Arabic spoken in Tunisia. It is known among its over 11 million speakers aeb, translit=Tounsi/Tounsiy, label=as, تونسي , "Tunisian" or "Everyday Language" to distingu ...
, 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
*
Aymara
Aymara may refer to:
Languages and people
* Aymaran languages, the second most widespread Andean language
** Aymara language, the main language within that family
** Central Aymara, the other surviving branch of the Aymara(n) family, which tod ...
*
Basque
Basque may refer to:
* Basques, an ethnic group of Spain and France
* Basque language, their language
Places
* Basque Country (greater region), the homeland of the Basque people with parts in both Spain and France
* Basque Country (autonomous co ...
*
Chamorro
*
Filipino
*
Galician
*
Guaraní
*
Iñupiaq
*
Mapudungun
*
Papiamento
*
Quechua
Quechua may refer to:
*Quechua people, several indigenous ethnic groups in South America, especially in Peru
*Quechuan languages, a Native South American language family spoken primarily in the Andes, derived from a common ancestral language
**So ...
*
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
*
Tetum
, nativename=Tetun
, states= Indonesia East Timor
, speakers=, mostly in Indonesia
, date=2010–2011
, ref=e18
, speakers2=50,000 L2-speakers in Indonesia and East Timor
, familycolor=Austronesian
, fam2=Malayo-Polynesian
, fam3= Central–East ...
*
Wolof
Tone
In
Vietnamese, a tilde over a vowel represents a creaky rising
tone (''ngã''). Letters with the tilde are not considered separate letters of the
Vietnamese alphabet
The Vietnamese alphabet ( vi, chữ Quốc ngữ, lit=script of the National language) is the modern Latin writing script or writing system for Vietnamese. It uses the Latin script based on Romance languages originally developed by Portuguese ...
.
International Phonetic Alphabet
In
phonetics
Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds, or in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians. ...
, a tilde is used as a
diacritic that is placed above a letter, below it or
superimpose
Superimposition is the placement of one thing over another, typically so that both are still evident.
Graphics
In graphics, superimposition is the placement of an image or video on top of an already-existing image or video, usually to add to t ...
d onto the middle of it:
* A tilde above a letter indicates
nasalization
In phonetics, nasalization (or nasalisation) is the production of a sound while the velum is lowered, so that some air escapes through the nose during the production of the sound by the mouth. An archetypal nasal sound is .
In the Internati ...
, e.g. .
* A tilde superimposed onto the middle of a letter indicates
velarization
Velarization is a secondary articulation of consonants by which the back of the tongue is raised toward the velum during the articulation of the consonant.
In the International Phonetic Alphabet, velarization is transcribed by one of four d ...
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
In
Estonian, the symbol stands for the
close-mid back unrounded vowel
The close-mid back unrounded vowel, or high-mid back unrounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. Its symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet is , called "ram's horns." This symbol is distinct from the symbol f ...
, and it is considered an independent letter.
Other uses
Some languages and alphabets use the tilde for other purposes, such as:
*
Arabic script: A symbol resembling the tilde () is used over the letter () to become
, denoting a long sound.
*
Guaraní: The tilded (note that with tilde is not available as a precomposed glyph in
Unicode) stands for the
velar nasal
The voiced velar nasal, also known as agma, from the Greek word for 'fragment', is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. It is the sound of ''ng'' in English ''sing'' as well as ''n'' before velar consonants as in ''Englis ...
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
The Syriac alphabet ( ) is a writing system primarily used to write the Syriac language since the 1st century AD. It is one of the Semitic abjads descending from the Aramaic alphabet through the Palmyrene alphabet, and shares similarities with ...
: A tilde (~) under the letter ''
Kaph
Kaph (also spelled kaf) is the eleventh letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician kāp , Hebrew kāf , Aramaic kāp , Syriac kāp̄ , and Arabic kāf (in abjadi order).
The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek kappa (Κ), Lati ...
'' represents a sound, transliterated as ''ch'' or ''č''.
*
Estonian and
Võro use the tilde above the letter o (õ) 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
Lithuanian ( ) is an Eastern Baltic language belonging to the Baltic branch of the Indo-European language family. It is the official language of Lithuania and one of the official languages of the European Union. There are about 2.8 millio ...
.
Punctuation
The tilde is used in various ways in punctuation, such as:
Range
In some languages (though not generally in English), a tilde-like wavy dash may be used as
punctuation
Punctuation (or sometimes interpunction) is the use of spacing, conventional signs (called punctuation marks), and certain typographical devices as aids to the understanding and correct reading of written text, whether read silently or aloud. An ...
(instead of an unspaced
hyphen
The hyphen is a punctuation mark used to join words and to separate syllables of a single word. The use of hyphens is called hyphenation. ''Son-in-law'' is an example of a hyphenated word. The hyphen is sometimes confused with dashes ( figure ...
,
en dash
The dash is a punctuation mark consisting of a long horizontal line. It is similar in appearance to the hyphen but is longer and sometimes higher from the baseline. The most common versions are the endash , generally longer than the hyphen b ...
or
em dash) between two
number
A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers ca ...
s, to indicate a
range
Range may refer to:
Geography
* Range (geographic), a chain of hills or mountains; a somewhat linear, complex mountainous or hilly area (cordillera, sierra)
** Mountain range, a group of mountains bordered by lowlands
* Range, a term used to i ...
rather than
subtraction
Subtraction is an arithmetic operation that represents the operation of removing objects from a collection. Subtraction is signified by the minus sign, . For example, in the adjacent picture, there are peaches—meaning 5 peaches with 2 taken ...
or a hyphenated number (such as a part number or model number). For example, "12~15" means "12 to 15", "~3" means "up to three", and "100~" means "100 and greater".
East Asian languages almost always use this convention, but it is often done for clarity in some other languages as well.
Chinese
Chinese can refer to:
* Something related to China
* Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity
**'' Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation
** List of ethnic groups in China, people of v ...
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
The field of electronics is a branch of physics and electrical engineering that deals with the emission, behaviour and effects of electrons using electronic devices. Electronics uses active devices to control electron flow by amplification ...
, but rarely in formal grammar or in type-set documents, as a wavy dash preceding a number sometimes represents an approximation (see below).
Approximation
Before a number the tilde can mean 'approximately'; '~42' means 'approximately 42'. When used with
currency symbols that precede the number (national conventions differ), the tilde precedes the symbol, thus for example '~$10' means 'about ten dollars'.
The symbols
≈ (almost equal to) and
≅ (approximately equal to) are among the other
symbols used to express approximation.
Japanese
The is used for various purposes in Japanese, including to denote ranges of numbers (e.g.,
''5〜10'' means between 5 and 10) 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 , katakana character, in Japanese, extending the final syllable.
=Unicode and Shift JIS encoding of wave dash
=
In practice the (Unicode ), is often used instead of the (Unicode ), because the
Shift JIS
Shift JIS (Shift Japanese Industrial Standards, also SJIS, MIME name Shift_JIS, known as PCK in Solaris contexts) is a character encoding for the Japanese language, originally developed by a Japanese company called ASCII Corporation in conjunc ...
code for the wave dash, 0x8160, which should be mapped to U+301C, is instead mapped to U+FF5E in
Windows code page 932 (
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washingt ...
's
code page for Japanese), a widely used extension of Shift JIS.
This decision avoided a shape definition error in the original (6.2) Unicode code charts:
[.] the wave dash reference glyph in JIS / Shift JIS
matches the Unicode reference glyph for U+FF5E , while the original reference glyph for U+301C
was reflected, incorrectly,
when Unicode imported the JIS wave dash. In other platforms such as the
classic Mac OS
Mac OS (originally System Software; retronym: Classic Mac OS) is the series of operating systems developed for the Macintosh family of personal computers by Apple Computer from 1984 to 2001, starting with System 1 and ending with Mac OS 9. ...
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
Extended Unix Code (EUC) is a multibyte character encoding system used primarily for Japanese, Korean, and simplified Chinese.
The most commonly used EUC codes are variable-length encodings with a character belonging to an compliant coded char ...
or
UHC code for the wave dash (0xA1AD) to ,
while
IBM and
Apple
An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple trees are cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, where its wild ancestor ...
map it to U+301C.
Microsoft also uses U+FF5E to map the KS X 1001 raised tilde (0xA2A6),
while Apple uses .
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
Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was release to manufacturing, released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct upgrade to its predecessors, Wind ...
, 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
JIS X 0213 is a Japanese Industrial Standard defining coded character sets for encoding the characters used in Japan. This standard extends JIS X 0208. The first version was published in 2000 and revised in 2004 (JIS2004) and 2012. As well as ad ...
, whereas the
WHATWG
The Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG) is a community of people interested in evolving HTML and related technologies. The WHATWG was founded by individuals from Apple Inc., the Mozilla Foundation and Opera Software, ...
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
Mathematical logic is the study of logic, formal logic within mathematics. Major subareas include model theory, proof theory, set theory, and recursion theory. Research in mathematical logic commonly addresses the mathematical properties of for ...
, the tilde represents
negation
In logic, negation, also called the logical complement, is an operation that takes a proposition P to another proposition "not P", written \neg P, \mathord P or \overline. It is interpreted intuitively as being true when P is false, and fal ...
: "~''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 (Unicode U+223C), sometimes called "twiddle", is often used to denote an
equivalence relation between two objects. Thus "" means " is
equivalent
Equivalence or Equivalent may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
*Album-equivalent unit, a measurement unit in the music industry
* Equivalence class (music)
*'' Equivalent VIII'', or ''The Bricks'', a minimalist sculpture by Carl Andre
*'' Equiv ...
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" (e.g. 1.902 ~= 2). This usage probably developed as a typed alternative to the
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
Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which relat ...
and
astronomy
Astronomy () is a natural science that studies celestial objects and phenomena. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and evolution. Objects of interest include planets, moons, stars, nebulae, galaxies ...
, a tilde can be used between two expressions (e.g. ) to state that the two are of the same
order of magnitude.
In
statistics
Statistics (from German: ''Statistik'', "description of a state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data. In applying statistics to a scientific, industria ...
and
probability theory
Probability theory is the branch of mathematics concerned with probability. Although there are several different probability interpretations, probability theory treats the concept in a rigorous mathematical manner by expressing it through a set o ...
, the tilde means "is distributed as";
see
random variable(e.g. X ~ B(n,p) for a binomial distribution).
A tilde can also be used to represent geometric
similarity
Similarity may refer to:
In mathematics and computing
* Similarity (geometry), the property of sharing the same shape
* Matrix similarity, a relation between matrices
* Similarity measure, a function that quantifies the similarity of two objects
* ...
(e.g. , meaning
triangle
A triangle is a polygon with three edges and three vertices. It is one of the basic shapes in geometry. A triangle with vertices ''A'', ''B'', and ''C'' is denoted \triangle ABC.
In Euclidean geometry, any three points, when non-collinea ...
is similar to ). A triple tilde (≋) is often used to show
congruence, an equivalence relation in geometry.
In
graph theory, the tilde can be used to represent adjacency between vertices. The edge
connects vertices
and
which can be said to be adjacent, and this adjacency can be denoted
.
As a diacritic
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
Lift or LIFT may refer to:
Physical devices
* Elevator, or lift, a device used for raising and lowering people or goods
** Paternoster lift, a type of lift using a continuous chain of cars which do not stop
** Patient lift, or Hoyer lift, mobile ...
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
Vector most often refers to:
* Euclidean vector, a quantity with a magnitude and a direction
* Vector (epidemiology), an agent that carries and transmits an infectious pathogen into another living organism
Vector may also refer to:
Mathemat ...
quantity (e.g.
).
In
statistics
Statistics (from German: ''Statistik'', "description of a state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data. In applying statistics to a scientific, industria ...
and
probability theory
Probability theory is the branch of mathematics concerned with probability. Although there are several different probability interpretations, probability theory treats the concept in a rigorous mathematical manner by expressing it through a set o ...
, a tilde placed on top of a variable is sometimes used to represent the
median
In statistics and probability theory, the median is the value separating the higher half from the lower half of a data sample, a population, or a probability distribution. For a data set, it may be thought of as "the middle" value. The basic f ...
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
Long short-term memory (LSTM) is an artificial neural network used in the fields of artificial intelligence and deep learning. Unlike standard feedforward neural networks, LSTM has feedback connections. Such a recurrent neural network (RNN) ...
units. (e.g. c̃)
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 (for instance
) a substitution
can be made, where
is the equilibrium part and
is the perturbed part.
A tilde is also used in
particle physics
Particle physics or high energy physics is the study of fundamental particles and forces that constitute matter and radiation. The fundamental particles in the universe are classified in the Standard Model as fermions (matter particles) an ...
to denote the hypothetical
supersymmetric partner. For example, an
electron is referred to by the letter ''e'', and its
superpartner
In particle physics, a superpartner (also sparticle) is a class of hypothetical elementary particles predicted by supersymmetry, which, among other applications, is one of the well-studied ways to extend the standard model of high-energy physic ...
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 (∿,
U+223F), which is used in
electronics
The field of electronics is a branch of physics and electrical engineering that deals with the emission, behaviour and effects of electrons using electronic devices. Electronics uses active devices to control electron flow by amplification ...
to indicate
alternating current
Alternating current (AC) is an electric current which periodically reverses direction and changes its magnitude continuously with time in contrast to direct current (DC) which flows only in one direction. Alternating current is the form in whic ...
, in place of +, −, or ⎓ for
direct current.
Linguistics
The tilde may indicate alternating
allomorphs or
morphological alternation, as in for ''kneel~knelt'' (the
plus sign '+' indicates a morpheme boundary).
The tilde may represent some sort of phonetic or phonemic variation between two sounds, which might be
allophone
In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is a set of multiple possible spoken soundsor ''phones''or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, (as in ''s ...
s or in
free variation
In linguistics, free variation is the phenomenon of two (or more) sounds or forms appearing in the same environment without a change in meaning and without being considered incorrect by native speakers.
Sociolinguists argue that describing such ...
. For example, can represent "either or ".
In
formal semantics, it is also used as a notation for the ''
squiggle operator'' which plays a key role in many theories of
focus.
Computing
Computer programmers
A computer programmer, sometimes referred to as a software developer, a software engineer, a programmer or a coder, is a person who creates computer programs — often for larger computer software.
A programmer is someone who writes/create ...
use the tilde in various ways and sometimes call the symbol (as opposed to the diacritic) a squiggle, squiggly, swiggle, or twiddle. According to the
Jargon File
The Jargon File is a glossary and usage dictionary of slang used by computer programmers. The original Jargon File was a collection of terms from technical cultures such as the MIT AI Lab, the Stanford AI Lab (SAIL) and others of the old ARPANET ...
, other synonyms sometimes used in programming include not, approx, wiggle, enyay (after ''
eñe'') and (humorously) sqiggle .
Directories and URLs
On
Unix-like
operating system
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs.
Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also ...
s (including
AIX,
BSD
The Berkeley Software Distribution or Berkeley Standard Distribution (BSD) is a discontinued operating system based on Research Unix, developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Ber ...
,
Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which in ...
and
macOS), tilde normally indicates the current user's
home directory
A home directory is a file system directory on a multi-user operating system containing files for a given user of the system. The specifics of the home directory (such as its name and location) are defined by the operating system involved; for ...
. For example, if the current user's home directory is , then the command is equivalent to , , or . This convention derives from the
Lear-Siegler
Lear Siegler Incorporated (LSI) is a diverse American corporation established in 1962. Its products range from car seats and brakes to weapons control systems for military fighter planes. The company's more than $2 billion-a-year annual sales come ...
ADM-3A
The ADM-3A was an influential early video display terminal, introduced in 1976. It was manufactured by Lear Siegler and had a 12-inch screen displaying 12 or 24 lines of 80 characters. It set a new industry low single unit price of $995. Its " ...
terminal in common use during the 1970s, which happened to have the tilde symbol and the word "Home" (for moving the cursor to the upper left) on the same key. When prepended to a particular username, the tilde indicates that user's home directory (e.g., for the home directory of user , such as ).
Used in
URLs
A Uniform Resource Locator (URL), colloquially termed as a web address, is a reference to a web resource that specifies its location on a computer network and a mechanism for retrieving it. A URL is a specific type of Uniform Resource Identifie ...
on the
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet.
Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web se ...
, it often denotes a personal website on a
Unix-based server. For example, might be the personal website 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 (or ) may substitute for a 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
AWK (''awk'') is a domain-specific language designed for text processing and typically used as a data extraction and reporting tool. Like sed and grep, it is a filter, and is a standard feature of most Unix-like operating systems.
The AWK la ...
programming language
A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Most programming languages are text-based formal languages, but they may also be graphical. They are a kind of computer language.
The description of a programming l ...
as part of the pattern match operators for
regular expression
A regular expression (shortened as regex or regexp; sometimes referred to as rational expression) is a sequence of characters that specifies a search pattern in text. Usually such patterns are used by string-searching algorithms for "find" or ...
s:
*
''variable'' ~ /''regex''/
returns true if the variable is matched.
*
''variable'' !~ /''regex''/
returns false if the variable is matched.
A variant of this, with the plain tilde replaced with
=~
, was adopted in
Perl, and this semi-standardization has led to the use of these operators in other programming languages, such as
Ruby
A ruby is a pinkish red to blood-red colored gemstone, a variety of the mineral corundum ( aluminium oxide). Ruby is one of the most popular traditional jewelry gems and is very durable. Other varieties of gem-quality corundum are called ...
or the
SQL variant of the database
PostgreSQL
PostgreSQL (, ), also known as Postgres, is a free and open-source relational database management system (RDBMS) emphasizing extensibility and SQL compliance. It was originally named POSTGRES, referring to its origins as a successor to the In ...
.
In
APL and
MATLAB, tilde represents the monadic logical function NOT, and in APL it additionally represents the dyadic
multiset function ''without'' (
set difference
In set theory, the complement of a set , often denoted by (or ), is the set of elements not in .
When all sets in the universe, i.e. all sets under consideration, are considered to be members of a given set , the absolute complement of is the ...
).
In
C the tilde character is used as
bitwise NOT
In computer programming, a bitwise operation operates on a bit string, a bit array or a binary numeral (considered as a bit string) at the level of its individual bits. It is a fast and simple action, basic to the higher-level arithmetic oper ...
unary
operator
Operator may refer to:
Mathematics
* A symbol indicating a mathematical operation
* Logical operator or logical connective in mathematical logic
* Operator (mathematics), mapping that acts on elements of a space to produce elements of another s ...
, following the notation in logic (an
!
causes a logical NOT, instead). This is also used by most languages based on or influenced by C, such as
C++
C, or c, is the third Letter (alphabet), letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the English alphabet, modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is English alphabet#Le ...
,
D and
C#. The
MySQL database also use tilde as bitwise invert as does Microsoft's SQL Server
Transact-SQL (T-SQL) language.
JavaScript
JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior, often ...
also uses tilde as bitwise NOT, and 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
~~x
as a short syntax for a cast to integer (numbers are stripped of their decimal part and changed into their complement, and then back).
In C++ and C#, the tilde is also used as the first character in a
class
Class or The Class may refer to:
Common uses not otherwise categorized
* Class (biology), a taxonomic rank
* Class (knowledge representation), a collection of individuals or objects
* Class (philosophy), an analytical concept used differentl ...
's
method
Method ( grc, μέθοδος, methodos) literally means a pursuit of knowledge, investigation, mode of prosecuting such inquiry, or system. In recent centuries it more often means a prescribed process for completing a task. It may refer to:
*Scien ...
name (where the rest of the name must be the same name as the class) to indicate a
destructor – a special method which is called at the end of the
object's life.
In ASP.NET application tilde ('~') is used as a shortcut to the root of the application's virtual directory.
In the
CSS
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used for describing the presentation of a document written in a markup language such as HTML or XML (including XML dialects such as SVG, MathML or XHTML). CSS is a cornerstone te ...
stylesheet language, the tilde is used for the indirect adjacent combinator as part of a selector.
In the
D programming language
D, also known as dlang, is a multi-paradigm system programming language created by Walter Bright at Digital Mars and released in 2001. Andrei Alexandrescu joined the design and development effort in 2007. Though it originated as a re-engin ...
, 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" (addition of two numbers), or "12014" (concatenation of strings) or something else? D disallows + operator for arrays (and strings), and provides separate operator for concatenation (similarly
PHP
PHP is a general-purpose scripting language geared toward web development. It was originally created by Danish-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1993 and released in 1995. The PHP reference implementation is now produced by The PHP Group. ...
programming language solved this problem by using dot operator for concatenation, and + for number addition, which will also work on strings containing numbers).
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'' (''b''), the expression ''a'' ~ ''b'' is
type-safe even in the presence of
covariance
In probability theory and statistics, covariance is a measure of the joint variability of two random variables. If the greater values of one variable mainly correspond with the greater values of the other variable, and the same holds for the les ...
.
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 C.
=~
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
Inform is a programming language and design system for interactive fiction originally created in 1993 by Graham Nelson. Inform can generate programs designed for the Z-code or Glulx virtual machines. Versions 1 through 5 were released betwe ...
programming language, the tilde is used to indicate a quotation mark inside a quoted string.
In "text mode" of the
LaTeX
Latex is an emulsion (stable dispersion) of polymer microparticles in water. Latexes are found in nature, but synthetic latexes are common as well.
In nature, latex is found as a milky fluid found in 10% of all flowering plants (angiosper ...
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
In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituency), ...
, four tildes are used as a shortcut for a user's signature.
In
Common Lisp
Common Lisp (CL) is a dialect of the Lisp programming language, published in ANSI standard document ''ANSI INCITS 226-1994 (S20018)'' (formerly ''X3.226-1994 (R1999)''). The Common Lisp HyperSpec, a hyperlinked HTML version, has been derived f ...
, the tilde is used as the prefix for format specifiers in format strings.
In
Max/MSP
Max, also known as Max/MSP/Jitter, is a visual programming language for music and multimedia developed and maintained by San Francisco-based software company Cycling '74. Over its more than thirty-year history, it has been used by composers, per ...
, 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
Standard ML (SML) is a general-purpose, modular, functional programming language with compile-time type checking and type inference. It is popular among compiler writers and programming language researchers, as well as in the development of th ...
, the tilde is used as the prefix for negative numbers and as the unary negation operator.
In
OCaml
OCaml ( , formerly Objective Caml) is a general-purpose, multi-paradigm programming language which extends the Caml dialect of ML with object-oriented features. OCaml was created in 1996 by Xavier Leroy, Jérôme Vouillon, Damien Doligez, Di ...
, the tilde is used to specify the label for a labeled parameter.
In
R, the tilde operator is used to separate the left- and right-hand sides in a model formula.
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("Jane")~~insert("Joe")~~insert("Steve")
would send multiple concurrent
insert
messages, thus invoking the
insert
method three consecutive times on the
team
object.
In
Raku, is used instead of for a
regular expression
A regular expression (shortened as regex or regexp; sometimes referred to as rational expression) is a sequence of characters that specifies a search pattern in text. Usually such patterns are used by string-searching algorithms for "find" or ...
.
Keyboards
The presence (or absence) of a tilde engraved on the keyboard depends on the territory where it was sold. In either case, computer's system settings determine the
keyboard mapping and the default setting will match the engravings on the keys. Even so, it certainly possible to configure a keyboard for a different locale than that supplied by the retailer. On American and British keyboards, the tilde is a standard keytop and pressing it produces a free-standing "ASCII Tilde". To generate a letter with a tilde diacritic requires the
US international or
UK extended keyboard setting.
* With US-international, the `/~ key is a
dead key
A dead key is a special kind of modifier key on a mechanical typewriter, or computer keyboard, that is typically used to attach a specific diacritic to a base letter. The dead key does not generate a (complete) character by itself, but modifies ...
: pressing the key then a letter produces the tilde-accented form of that letter. (For example, produces .) With this setting active, an ASCII tilde can be inserted with the dead key followed by the space bar, or alternatively by striking the dead key twice in a row.
* With UK-extended, the key works normally but becomes a 'dead key' when combined with
AltGr
AltGr (also Alt Graph) is a modifier key found on many computer keyboards (rather than a second Alt key found on US keyboards). It is primarily used to type characters that are not widely used in the territory where sold, such as foreign cur ...
. Thus then a letter produces the accented form of that letter.
* With a
Macintosh
The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and software en ...
either of the Alt/
Option keys function similarly.
* With
Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which in ...
, the
compose key facility is used.
Instructions for other national languages and keyboards are beyond the scope of this article.
In the US and European
Windows
Windows is a group of several Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, W ...
systems, the
Alt code
On personal computers with numeric keypads that use Microsoft operating systems, such as Windows, many characters that do not have a dedicated key combination on the keyboard may nevertheless be entered using the Alt code (the Alt numpad input ...
for a single tilde is
126
.
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
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washingt ...
's
filename mangling scheme when it extended the
FAT
In nutrition, biology, and chemistry, fat usually means any ester of fatty acids, or a mixture of such compounds, most commonly those that occur in living beings or in food.
The term often refers specifically to triglycerides (tripl ...
file system standard to support long filenames for
Microsoft Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for se ...
. 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 (e.g. no spaces), 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.
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 (~2x,1)(1,2x)(2x,~1)*.
Unicode
Variants and similars
Unicode has code-points for many forms of non-combined tilde, for symbols incorporating tildes, and for characters visually similar to a tilde.
Precomposed characters
A number of characters in Unicode, have tilde
precomposed.
See also
*
Circumflex
The circumflex () is a diacritic in the Latin and Greek scripts that is also used in the written forms of many languages and in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from la, circumflexus "bent around" ...
**
Caret (computing)
Caret is the name used familiarly for the character , provided on most QWERTY keyboards by typing . The symbol has a variety of uses in programming and mathematics. The name "caret" arose from its visual similarity to the original proofread ...
*
Tittle
*
Double tilde (disambiguation) Double tilde (~~ or ≈) may refer to:
*Approximation * Double negation ~(~
* Smart match operator in Perl, ~~
*Double binary NOT operator ( as used in languages like JavaScript and PHP as a quick way to cast variable as integer, where it is ...
Notes
References
{{navbox punctuation
Latin-script diacritics
Punctuation
Typographical symbols
Greek-script diacritics
Logic symbols
Mathematical symbols
*