Tilde
~ | |
---|---|
Tilde | |
See also | |
Double tilde: Approximation [≈] or Double negation [ ~(~ ] |
◌̃ | |
---|---|
Combining tilde | |
In Unicode | U+0303 ◌̃ COMBINING TILDE |
The tilde (/ˈtɪldə/[1]), ˜ or ~, is a grapheme with several uses.[a] The name of the character came into English from Spanish and Portuguese, which in turn came from the Latin titulus, meaning "title" or "superscription".[1] Its primary use is as a diacritic (accent) in combination with a base letter but, for historical reasons, it also is used in standalone form in a variety of contexts.
History[edit]
Use by medieval scribes[edit]
The tilde was originally written over an omitted letter or several letters as a scribal abbreviation, or "mark of suspension" and "mark of contraction",[2] 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 text of the Domesday Book of 1086, relating for example, to the manor of Molland in Devon (see adjacent picture), is highly abbreviated as indicated by numerous tildes.
![](http://webcf.waybackmachine.org/web/20220503235003im_/https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/75/Text_of_Exeter_Domesday_Book_of_1086.jpg/300px-Text_of_Exeter_Domesday_Book_of_1086.jpg)
The text with abbreviations expanded is as follows:
Mollande tempore regis Edwardi geldabat pro quattuor hidis et uno ferling. Terra est quadraginta carucae. In dominio sunt tres carucae et decem servi et triginta villani et viginti bordarii cum sedecim carucis. Ibi duodecim acrae prati et quindecim acrae silvae. Pastura tres leugae in longitudine et latitudine. Reddit quattuor et viginti libras ad pensam. Huic manerio est adjuncta Blachepole. Elwardus tenebat tempore regis Edwardi pro manerio et geldabat pro dimidia hida. Terra est duae carucae. Ibi sunt quinque villani cum uno servo. Valet viginti solidos ad pensam et arsuram. Eidem manerio est injuste adjuncta Nimete et valet quindecim solidos. Ipsi manerio pertinet tercius denarius de Hundredis Nortmoltone et Badentone et Brantone et tercium animal pasturae morarum.
Role of mechanical typewriters[edit]
The incorporation of the tilde into ASCII is a direct result of its appearance as a distinct character on Portuguese mechanical typewriters in the late nineteenth century. This symbol did not exist independently as a type or hot-lead printing character.
On typewriters designed for languages that routinely use diacritics (accent marks), a dead key mechanism was provided: a mark is made when a dead key is typed but, unlike normal keys, the paper carriage does not move on. To achieve an accented letter, the typist first typed the desired diacritic, then typed the letter to be accented. Since the diacritic key – a 'dead key' – had not moved the paper on, the letter was printed under the previously-printed accent. To add a diacritic to a capital letter on some typewriters, the upper-case [elevated] version of the accent could be produced using ⇧ Shift plus the diacritic key. On others, however, the typebar had two different diacritics so that users could only add accents to lower-case letters without manual intervention or other adjustment.
For most Western European languages, the only diacritics used are acute (´), grave (`, circumflex (ˆ) and diaeresis (or umlaut, ¨): early typewriters for the European market included these as dead keys. Spanish and Portuguese uniquely use the tilde diacritic. In modern Spanish, the tilde accent is needed only for the characters ñ and Ñ. Both were precomposed as distinct graphemes and assigned to a single typebar, which sacrificed a key that was felt to be less important, usually the 1⁄4 1⁄2 key. Portuguese, however, has two: ã Ã and õ Õ. Whereas it was just about possible to find one low-use key to sacrifice for Spanish, to find two sacrificial keys for Portuguese was impractical. Instead a single key was changed to a tilde dead key and ⟨~⟩ was born as a distinct grapheme.
The centralized ASCII tilde[edit]
Serif: | —~— |
Sans-serif: | —~— |
Monospace: | —~— |
A free-standing tilde between two em dashes in three font families |
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 diacritics (and the underscore) 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 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 tilde at the same level as dashes, or only slightly higher.
The tilde is at code 126 in ASCII, where it was inherited into Unicode as U+007E.
Typography and lexicography called a similar shaped mark the swung dash, ⁓, are used in dictionaries to indicate the omission of the entry word.[3]
Connection to Spanish[edit]
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 ⟨n⟩ to form the (different) letter ⟨ñ⟩ 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 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.[4][5] The Instituto Cervantes, founded by Spain's government to promote the Spanish language internationally, chose as its logo a highly stylised Ñ 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 (NBA), 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.[6] 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 ñ (much like the dot over ı makes an i character that is familiar to readers of English).
Usage[edit]
Common use in English[edit]
The English language does not use the tilde as a diacritic, though it is used in some loanwords. The standalone form of the symbol is used more widely. Informally,[7] it means "approximately", "about", or "around", such as "~30 minutes before", meaning "approximately 30 minutes before".[8][9] It can mean "similar to",[10] including "of the same order of magnitude as",[7] such as "x ~ y" meaning that x and y are of the same order of magnitude. Another approximation symbol is the double tilde ≈, meaning "approximately equal to".[8][10][11] The tilde is also used to indicate congruence of shapes by placing it over an = symbol, thus ≅.
In Japanese it is used in to indicate a range or interval: 5〜10 means between 5 and 10.
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[s] the enclosed words perform both sincerity and irony", which can pre-emptively defuse a negative reaction.[12] For example, BuzzFeed 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".[12][b]
Diacritical use[edit]
In some languages, the tilde is a diacritic mark placed over a letter to indicate a change in its pronunciation:
Pitch[edit]
The tilde was firstly 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[edit]
![](http://webcf.waybackmachine.org/web/20220503235003im_/https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a2/Hic_Fabricatur_Naves.jpg/220px-Hic_Fabricatur_Naves.jpg)
Later, it was used to make abbreviations in medieval Latin documents. When an ⟨n⟩ or ⟨m⟩ followed a vowel, it was often omitted, and a tilde (physically, a small ⟨N⟩) 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 ⟨e⟩.) The practice of using the tilde over a vowel to indicate omission of an ⟨n⟩ or ⟨m⟩ continued in printed books in French as a means of reducing text length until the 17th century. It was also used in Portuguese and Spanish.
The tilde was also used occasionally to make other abbreviations, such as over the letter ⟨q⟩, making q̃, to signify the word que ("that").
Nasalization[edit]
It is also as a small ⟨n⟩ that the tilde originated when written above other letters, marking a Latin ⟨n⟩ 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 (IPA) and many other phonetic alphabets. For example, [ljɔ̃] is the IPA transcription of the pronunciation of the French place-name Lyon.
In Breton, the symbol ⟨ñ⟩ after a vowel means that the letter ⟨n⟩ serves only to give the vowel a nasalised pronunciation, without being itself pronounced, as it normally is. For example, ⟨an⟩ gives the pronunciation [ãn] whereas ⟨añ⟩ gives [ã].
In the DMG romanization of Tunisian Arabic, the tilde is used for nasal vowels õ and ṏ.
Palatal n[edit]
The tilded ⟨n⟩ (⟨ñ⟩, ⟨Ñ⟩) developed from the digraph ⟨nn⟩ in Spanish. In this language, ⟨ñ⟩ is considered a separate letter called eñe (IPA: [ˈeɲe]), rather than a letter-diacritic combination; it is placed in Spanish dictionaries between the letters ⟨n⟩ and ⟨o⟩. In Spanish, the word tilde actually refers to diacritics in general, e.g. the acute accent in José,[13] while the diacritic in ⟨ñ⟩ is called "virgulilla" (IPA: [birɣuˈliʝa]).[14] Current languages in which the tilded ⟨n⟩ (⟨ñ⟩) is used for the palatal nasal consonant /ɲ/ include
Tone[edit]
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.
International Phonetic Alphabet[edit]
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. [ã], [ṽ].
- A tilde superimposed onto the middle of a letter indicates velarization or pharyngealization, e.g. [ɫ], [z̴]. If no precomposed Unicode character exists, the Unicode character U+0334 ◌̴ COMBINING TILDE OVERLAY can be used to generate one.
- A tilde below a letter indicates laryngealisation, e.g. [d̰]. If no precomposed Unicode character exists, the Unicode character U+0330 ◌̰ COMBINING TILDE BELOW can be used to generate one.
Letter extension[edit]
In Estonian, the symbol ⟨õ⟩ stands for the close-mid back unrounded vowel, and it is considered an independent letter.
Other uses[edit]
Some languages and alphabets use the tilde for other purposes:
- Arabic script: A symbol resembling the tilde (U+0653 ـٓ ARABIC MADDAH ABOVE) is used over the letter ⟨ا⟩ (/a/) to become ⟨آ⟩, denoting a long /aː/ sound.
- Guaraní: The tilded ⟨G̃⟩ (note that ⟨G/g⟩ with tilde is not available as a precomposed glyph in Unicode) stands for the velar nasal consonant. Also, the tilded ⟨y⟩ (⟨Ỹ⟩) stands for the nasalized upper central rounded vowel [ɨ̃]. Munduruku, Parintintín, and two older spellings of Filipino words also use ⟨g̃⟩.
- Syriac script: A tilde (~) under the letter Kaph represents a [t͡ʃ] sound, transliterated as ch or č.[15]
- Estonian and Võro use the tilde above the letter o (õ) to indicate the vowel [ɤ], a rare sound among languages.
- Unicode has a combining vertical tilde character: U+033E ◌̾ COMBINING VERTICAL TILDE. It is used to indicate middle tone in linguistic transcription of certain dialects of the Lithuanian language.[16]
Punctuation[edit]
The tilde is used in various ways in punctuation:
Range[edit]
In some languages (though not generally in English),[citation needed] a tilde-like wavy dash may be used as punctuation (instead of an unspaced hyphen, en dash or em dash) between two numbers, to indicate a range rather than subtraction 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 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 (see below).
Approximation[edit]
Before a number the tilde can mean 'approximately'; '~42' means 'approximately 42'.[17] 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'.[18]
The symbols ≈ (almost equal to) and ≅ (approximately equal to) are among the other symbols used to express approximation.
Japanese[edit]
The wave dash (波ダッシュ, nami dasshu) 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 chōon, katakana character, in Japanese, extending the final syllable.
Unicode and Shift JIS encoding of wave dash[edit]
In practice the full-width tilde (全角チルダ, zenkaku chiruda) (Unicode U+FF5E ~ FULLWIDTH TILDE), is often used instead of the wave dash (波ダッシュ, nami dasshu) (Unicode U+301C 〜 WAVE DASH), because the Shift JIS code for the wave dash, 0x8160, which should be mapped to U+301C,[19][20] is instead mapped to U+FF5E[21] in Windows code page 932 (Microsoft'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:[22] the wave dash reference glyph in JIS / Shift JIS[23][24] matches the Unicode reference glyph for U+FF5E FULLWIDTH TILDE,[25] while the original reference glyph for U+301C[22] was reflected, incorrectly,[26] 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 (0xA1AD) to U+223C ∼ TILDE OPERATOR,[27][28] while IBM and Apple map it to U+301C.[29][30][31] Microsoft also uses U+FF5E to map the KS X 1001 raised tilde (0xA2A6),[28] while Apple uses U+02DC ˜ SMALL TILDE.[31]
The current Unicode reference glyph for U+301C has been corrected[26] to match the JIS standard[32] 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.[33]
The JIS / Shift JIS wave dash is still formally mapped to U+301C as of JIS X 0213,[34] whereas the WHATWG Encoding Standard used by HTML5 follows Microsoft in mapping 0x8160 to U+FF5E.[35] These two code points have a similar or identical glyph in several fonts, reducing the confusion and incompatibility.
Mathematics[edit]
As a unary operator[edit]
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[edit]
In mathematics, the tilde operator (Unicode U+223C), sometimes called "twiddle", is often used to denote an equivalence relation between two objects. Thus "x ~ y" means "x is equivalent to y". It is a weaker statement than stating that x equals y. The expression "x ~ y" is sometimes read aloud as "x twiddles y", perhaps as an analogue to the verbal expression of "x = y".[36]
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, f (x) ~ g(x) means that .[7]
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 and astronomy, a tilde can be used between two expressions (e.g. h ~ 10−34 J s) to state that the two are of the same order of magnitude.[7]
In statistics and probability theory, the tilde means "is distributed as";[7] see random variable(e.g. X ~ B(n,p) for a binomial distribution).
A tilde can also be used to represent geometric similarity (e.g. ∆ABC ~ ∆DEF, meaning triangle ABC is similar to DEF). A triple tilde (≋) is often used to show congruence, an equivalence relation in geometry.
As a diacritic[edit]
The symbol "" is pronounced as "eff tilde" or, informally, as "eff twiddle" or, in American English, "eff wiggle".[37][38] 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 (e.g. ).
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. (e.g. c̃)
Physics[edit]
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 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[edit]
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[edit]
It can approximate the sine wave symbol (∿, U+223F), which is used in electronics to indicate alternating current, in place of +, −, or ⎓ for direct current.
Linguistics[edit]
The tilde may indicate alternating allomorphs or morphological alternation, as in //ˈniː~ɛl+t// for kneel~knelt (the plus sign '+' indicates a morpheme boundary).[39][40]
The tilde may represent some sort of phonetic or phonemic variation between two sounds, which might be allophones or in free variation. For example, [χ ~ x] can represent "either [χ] or [x]".
In formal semantics, it is also used as a notation for the squiggle operator which plays a key role in many theories of focus.[41]
Computing[edit]
Computer programmers 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, other synonyms sometimes used in programming include not, approx, wiggle, enyay (after eñe) and (humorously) sqiggle /ˈskɪɡəl/.
Directories and URLs[edit]
On Unix-like operating systems (including AIX, BSD, Linux and macOS), tilde normally indicates the current user's home directory. For example, if the current user's home directory is /home/user, then the command cd ~ is equivalent to cd /home/user, cd $HOME, or cd. 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" (for moving the cursor to the upper left) on the same key.[citation needed] When prepended to a particular username, the tilde indicates that user's home directory (e.g., ~janedoe for the home directory of user janedoe, such as /home/janedoe).[42]
Used in URLs on the World Wide Web, it often denotes a personal website on a Unix-based server. For example, http://www.example.com/~johndoe/ 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 /home/username/public_html or /home/username/www.[43]
In URLs, the characters %7E (or %7e) may substitute for a tilde if an input device lacks a tilde key.[44] Thus, http://www.example.com/~johndoe/ and http://www.example.com/%7Ejohndoe/ will behave in the same manner.
Computer languages[edit]
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.
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 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 (set difference).
In C the tilde character is used as bitwise NOT unary operator, 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++, D and C#. The MySQL database also use tilde as bitwise invert[45] as does Microsoft's SQL Server Transact-SQL (T-SQL) language. JavaScript 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's method 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 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" (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 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 the Apache Groovy programming language the tilde character is used as an operator mapped to the bitwiseNegate() method.[46] 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.[47][48]
In Haskell, the tilde is used in type constraints to indicate type equality.[49] Also, in pattern-matching, the tilde is used to indicate a lazy pattern match.[50]
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., \~{n}
, 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{x}
. 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{http://server/~name}
.
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.[51]
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 R, the tilde operator is used to separate the left- and right-hand sides in a model formula.[52]
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.
Keyboards[edit]
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: pressing the ~ key then a letter produces the tilde-accented form of that letter. (For example, ~ a produces ã.) 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. Thus AltGr+# then a letter produces the accented form of that letter.
- With a Macintosh either of the Alt/Option keys function similarly.
- With Linux, 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 systems, the Alt code for a single tilde is 126
.
Backup filenames[edit]
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[53] and was adopted by many other editors and some command-line tools.
Emacs also introduced an elaborate numbered backup scheme, with files named filename.~1~, filename.~2~ and so on. It didn't catch on, as the rise of version control software eliminates the need for this usage.
Microsoft filenames[edit]
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 (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, "Program Files" might become "PROGRA~1".
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[edit]
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)*.[54]
Letters with tilde[edit]
Unicode[edit]
The following letters that use the tilde as a diacritic have Unicode code points as precomposed or combining 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 |
à | 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 |
Unicode has code-points for many forms of non-combined tilde, for symbols incorporating tildes, and for 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. |
~ | U+E007E | TAG TILDE | Formatting tag control character. |
See also[edit]
Notes[edit]
- ^ Several more or less common informal names are used for the tilde that usually describe the shape, including squiggly, squiggle(s), and flourish.
- ^ See also Air quotes.
References[edit]
- ^ a b tilde in the American Heritage dictionary
- ^ Martin, Charles Trice (1910). The record interpreter : a collection of abbreviations, Latin words and names used in English historical manuscripts and records (2nd ed.). London, preface, p.5 [1]
- ^ "Swung dash", WordNet (search) (3.0 ed.)
- ^ "26 argumentos para seguir defendiendo la Ñ". La Razón. 11 January 2011. Retrieved 31 January 2016.
- ^ AFP (18 November 2004). "Batalla de la Ñ: Una aventura quijotesca para defender el alma de la lengua". Periódico ABC Paraguay. Retrieved 31 January 2016.
- ^ Diccionario de la lengua española, Real Academia Española
- ^ a b c d e "Tilde". Wolfram/MathWorld. 3 November 2011. Retrieved 11 November 2011.
- ^ a b "All Elementary Mathematics – Mathematical symbols dictionary". Bymath. Retrieved 11 November 2011.
- ^ "Character design standards - Maths". Microsoft.
- ^ a b Quinn, Liam. "HTML 4.0 Entities for Symbols and Greek Letters". HTML help. Retrieved 11 November 2011.
- ^ "Math Symbols... Those Most Valuable and Important: Approximately Equal Symbol". Solving Math problems. 20 September 2010. Retrieved 11 November 2011.
- ^ a b Bernstein, Joseph. "The Hidden Language of The ~Tilde~". BuzzFeed News.
- ^ Ortografía de la lengua española. Madrid: Real Academia Española. 2010. p. 279. ISBN 978-84-670-3426-4.
- ^ "Lema en la RAE". Real Academia Española. Retrieved 10 October 2015.
- ^ Nestle, Eberhard (1888). Syrische Grammatik mit Litteratur, Chrestomathie und Glossar. Berlin: H. Reuther's Verlagsbuchhandlung. [translated to English as Syriac grammar with bibliography, chrestomathy and glossary, by R. S. Kennedy. London: Williams & Norgate 1889. p. 5].
- ^ Lithuanian Standards Board (LST), proposal for a zigzag diacritic
- ^ "Tilde Definition". linfo.org. The Linux Information Project. 24 June 2005. Retrieved 27 January 2020.
- ^ "Using a tilde with currency".
- ^ "Appendix 1: Shift_JIS-2004 vs Unicode mapping table", JIS X 0213:2004, X 0213.
- ^ Shift-JIS to Unicode, Unicode.
- ^ "Windows 932_81". Microsoft. Retrieved 30 July 2010.
- ^ a b CJK Symbols and Punctuation (Unicode 6.2) (PDF) (chart), Unicode.
- ^ Japanese National Committee on ISO/TC97/SC2. ISO-IR-87: Japanese Graphic Character Set for Information Interchange (PDF). ITSCJ/IPSJ.
- ^ Japanese Industrial Standards Committee. ISO-IR-233: Japanese Graphic Character Set for Information Interchange, Plane 1 (Update of ISO-IR 228) (PDF). ITSCJ/IPSJ.
- ^ Halfwidth and Fullwidth Forms (PDF) (chart), Unicode.
- ^ a b Errata Fixed in Unicode 8.0.0, Unicode
- ^ "windows-949-2000 (lead byte A1)". ICU Demonstration - Converter Explorer. International Components for Unicode.
- ^ a b "Lead Byte A1-A2 (Code page 949)". MSDN. Microsoft.
- ^ "ibm-1363_P110-1997 (lead byte A1)". ICU Demonstration - Converter Explorer. International Components for Unicode.
- ^ "euc-kr (lead byte A1)". ICU Demonstration - Converter Explorer. International Components for Unicode.
- ^ a b "Map (external version) from Mac OS Korean encoding to Unicode 3.2 and later". Apple.
- ^ CJK Symbols and Punctuation (PDF) (chart), Unicode
- ^ Komatsu, Hiroyuki, L2/14-198: Proposal for the modification of the sample character layout of WAVE_DASH (U+301C) (PDF)
- ^ Shift_JIS-2004 (JIS X 0213:2004 Appendix 1) vs Unicode mapping table, x0213.org
- ^ "Shift_JIS visualization", Encoding Standard, WHATWG
- ^ Derbyshire, J (2004), Prime Obsession: Bernhard Riemann and the Greatest Unsolved Problem in Mathematics, New York: Penguin.
- ^ "Tilde". Wolfram Research. Retrieved 4 June 2018.
- ^ Choy, Stephen TL; Jesudason, Judith Packer; Lee, Peng Yee (1988). Proceedings of the Analysis Conference, Singapore 1986. Elsevier. ISBN 9780080872612.
- ^ Collinge (2002) An Encyclopedia of Language, §4.2.
- ^ Hayes, Bruce (2011). Introductory Phonology. John Wiley & Sons. pp. 87–88. ISBN 9781444360134.
- ^ Buring, Daniel (2016). Intonation and Meaning. Oxford University Press. pp. 36–41. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199226269.003.0003. ISBN 978-0-19-922627-6.
- ^ "Tilde expansion", C Library Manual, The GNU project, retrieved 4 July 2010.
- ^ "Module mod_userdir", HTTP Server Documentation (version 2.0 ed.), The Apache foundation, retrieved 4 July 2010.
- ^ RFC 3986, IETF.
- ^ "MySQL :: Reference Manual :: Bit Functions and Operators". dev.mysql.com. Retrieved 20 December 2019.
- ^ "The Groovy programming language - Operators".
- ^ Groovy Regular Expression User Guide, Code haus.
- ^ Groovy RegExp FAQ, Code haus.
- ^ "Type Families", Haskell Wiki.
- ^ "Lazy pattern match - HaskellWiki".
- ^ "CLHS: Section 22.3". Lispworks.com. 11 April 2005. Retrieved 30 July 2010.
- ^ The R Reference Index
- ^ Emacs Manual
- ^ "The Internet Juggling Database". Archived from the original on 28 July 2005. Retrieved 6 November 2009.