Tilde
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Tilde
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The tilde (/ˈtɪldə/;[1] ˜ or ~)[2] is a grapheme with several uses. The name of the character came into English from Spanish, which in turn came from the Latin titulus, meaning "title" or "superscription."[1]
The reason for the name was that it was originally written over a letter as a scribal abbreviation, as a "mark of suspension", shown as a straight line when used with capitals. Thus the commonly used words Anno Domini were frequently abbreviated to Ao Dñi, an elevated terminal with a suspension mark placed over the "n". Such a mark could denote the omission of one letter or several letters. This saved on the expense of the scribe's labour and the cost of vellum and ink. Medieval European charters written in Latin are largely made up of such abbreviated words with suspension marks and other abbreviations; only uncommon words were given in full. The tilde has since been applied to a number of other uses as a diacritic mark or a character in its own right. These are encoded in Unicode at U+0303 ◌̃ COMBINING TILDE and U+007E ~ TILDE (as a spacing character), and there are additional similar characters for different roles. In lexicography, the latter kind of tilde and the swung dash (⁓) are used in dictionaries to indicate the omission of the entry word.[3]
Contents
Common use[edit]
This symbol (in English) informally[4] means "approximately", "about", or "around", such as "~30 minutes before", meaning "approximately 30 minutes before".[5][6] It can mean "similar to",[7] including "of the same order of magnitude as",[4] 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",[5][7][8] the critical difference being the subjective level of accuracy: ≈ indicates a value which can be considered functionally equivalent for a calculation within an acceptable degree of error, whereas ~ is usually used to indicate a larger, possibly significant, degree of error. The tilde is also used to indicate "equal to" or "approximately equal to" by placing it over the "=" symbol, like so: ≅.
History[edit]
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Use by medieval scribes[edit]
![](http://web.archive.org./web/20170213200304im_/https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/7/7b/MollandDB3.jpg/300px-MollandDB3.jpg)
The text of the Domesday Book of 1086, relating for example, to the manor of Molland in Devon (see image left), is highly abbreviated as indicated by numerous tildes. The text with abbreviations expanded is as follows:
- "Mollande tempore regis Edwardi geldabat pro iiii hidis et uno ferling. Terra est xl carucis. In dominio sunt iii carucae et x servi et xxx villani et xx bordarii cum xvi carucis. Ibi xii acrae prati et xv acrae silvae. Pastura iii leugae in longitudine et latitudine. Libras ad pensam. Huic manerio est adjuncta Blachepole. Elwardus tenebat tempore regis Edwardi pro manerio et geldabat pro dimidia hida. Terra est ii carucis. Ibi sunt v villani cum i servo. Valet xx solidos ad pensam et arsuram. Eidem manerio est injuste adjuncta Nimete et valet xv 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 mechanical typewriters in the late nineteenth century. When all character sets were pieces of metal permanently installed, and number of characters much more limited than in typography, the question of which languages and markets required which characters was an important one. Any good typewriter store had a catalog of alternative keyboards that could be specified for machines ordered from the factory.
At that time, the tilde was used only in Spanish and Portuguese typewriters (keyboards). In Modern Spanish, the tilde is used only with n and N. Both were conveniently assigned to a single mechanical typebar, which sacrificed a key that was felt to be less important, usually the 1⁄2— 1⁄4 key.
Portuguese, however, uses not ñ but nh. It uses the tilde on the vowels a and o. So as not to sacrifice two of the tightly limited keys to ã Ã õ Õ, the decision was made to make the ~ a separate "dead" character in which the carriage holding the paper did not move. Dead keys, which had a notch cut out to avoid hitting a mechanical linkage that triggered carriage movement, were used for characters that were intended to be combined (overstruck).
On mechanical typewriters, Spanish keyboards (the first, or one of the first, non-English keyboards) had a dead key, which contained the acute accent (´), used over any vowel, and the dieresis (¨), used only over u. It was a simple matter to create a dead key for a Portuguese keyboard (created later than the Spanish one) to be overstruck with a and o and so the ~ was born as a typographical character, which did not exist previously as a type or hot-lead printing character. That was probably a product of the first and leading manufacturer of (mechanical) typewriters, Remington.
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 "ñ" in Spanish, a feature shared by only a few other languages, all historically connected to Spanish. This peculiarity can help non-native speakers quickly identify a text as being written in Spanish with little chance of error. In addition, most native speakers, although not all, use the word "español" to refer to their language. Particularly during the 1990s, Spanish-speaking intellectuals and news outlets demonstrated support for the language and the culture by defending this letter against globalisation and computerisation trends that threatened to remove it from keyboards and other standardised products and codes.[9][10] 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. A 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.
Diacritical use[edit]
In some languages, the tilde is used as a diacritical mark ( ˜ ) placed over a letter to indicate a change in pronunciation, such as nasalization.
Pitch[edit]
It was first used in the polytonic orthography of Ancient Greek, as a variant of the circumflex, representing a rise in pitch followed by a return to standard pitch.
Abbreviation[edit]
![](http://web.archive.org./web/20170213200304im_/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 (i.e., 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⟩ ("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].
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⟩. As the word tilde can also refer to the most common diacritic in this language, e.g., the acute accent in José is also called a tilde in Spanish,[11] the diacritic in ⟨ñ⟩ is called "virgulilla".[12] Current languages in which the tilded ⟨n⟩ (⟨ñ⟩) is used for the palatal nasal consonant /ɲ/ include:
- Asturian
- Basque
- Chamorro language
- Filipino
- Galician
- Guaraní
- Iñupiaq
- Mapudungun
- Papiamento
- Quechua
- Spanish
- Tetum
Tone[edit]
In Vietnamese, a tilde over a vowel represents a creaky rising tone (ngã).
International Phonetic Alphabet[edit]
In phonetics, a tilde is used as a diacritic either placed above a letter, below it or superimposed onto the middle of it (see International Phonetic Alphabet → Diacritics):
- 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 ([ʔæː]).
- 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]. A small number of other alphabets also use ⟨g̃⟩.
- Syriac script: A tilde (~) under the letter Kaph represents a [t͡ʃ] sound, transliterated as ch or č.[13]
- 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.[14]
Precomposed Unicode characters[edit]
The following letters using the tilde as a diacritic exist 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 |
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 |
Similar characters[edit]
There are many Unicode characters for tildes, symbols incorporating tildes, and characters visually similar to a tilde:
Character | Code point | Name | Comments |
---|---|---|---|
~ | U+007E | TILDE | Same as keyboard tilde. In-line. |
˜ | U+02DC | SMALL TILDE | Raised but quite small. |
˷ | U+02F7 | MODIFIER LETTER LOW TILDE | |
◌̃ | U+0303 | COMBINING TILDE | |
◌̰ | U+0330 | COMBINING TILDE BELOW | Used in IPA to indicate creaky voice |
◌̴ | U+0334 | COMBINING TILDE OVERLAY | Used in IPA to indicate velarization or pharyngealization |
◌̾ | U+033E | COMBINING VERTICAL TILDE | |
◌͂ | U+0342 | COMBINING GREEK PERISPOMENI | Used as an Ancient Greek accent under the name "circumflex"; it can also be written as an inverted breve. |
◌͊ | U+034A | COMBINING NOT TILDE ABOVE | Raised, small, with slash through. |
◌͠◌ | U+0360 | COMBINING DOUBLE TILDE | |
◌֘ | U+0598 | HEBREW ACCENT ZARQA | Hebrew cantillation mark. |
◌֮ | U+05AE | HEBREW ACCENT ZINOR | Hebrew cantillation mark. |
◌᷉ | U+1DC9 | COMBINING ACUTE-GRAVE-ACUTE | Used in IPA as a tone mark. |
⁓ | U+2053 | SWUNG DASH | |
∼ | U+223C | TILDE OPERATOR | Used in mathematics. In-line. Ends not curved as much. |
∽ | U+223D | REVERSED TILDE | In some fonts it is the tilde's simple mirror image; others extend the tips to resemble a ∞. |
∿ | U+223F | SINE WAVE | |
≁ | 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 | 50% wider. In-line. Ends not curved much. |
~ | U+E007E | TAG TILDE | Formatting tag control character. |
ASCII tilde (U+007E)[edit]
Serif: | —~— |
Sans-serif: | —~— |
Monospace: | —~— |
A tilde between two em dashes in three font families |
![](http://web.archive.org./web/20170213200304im_/https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/28/Dot_printer_ASCII0x7C%2B.png/160px-Dot_printer_ASCII0x7C%2B.png)
Most modern proportional fonts align plain spacing tilde at the same level as dashes, or only slightly upper. This distinguishes it from a small tilde ( ˜ ), which is always raised. But in some monospace fonts, especially used in text user interfaces, ASCII tilde character is raised too. This apparently is a legacy of typewriters, where pairs of similar spacing and combining characters relied on one glyph. Even in line printers' age character repertoires were often not large enough to distinguish between plain tilde, small tilde and combining tilde. Overprinting of a letter by the tilde was a working method of combining a letter.
Punctuation[edit]
The swung dash (~) 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 or en-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". Japanese and other East Asian languages almost always use this convention, but it is often done for clarity in some other languages as well. Chinese uses the wavy dash and full-width em dash interchangeably for this purpose. In English, the tilde is often used to express ranges and model numbers in electronics, but rarely in formal grammar or in type-set documents, as a wavy dash preceding a number sometimes represents an approximation (see below).
Approximation[edit]
Before a number the tilde can mean "approximately"; "~42" means "approximately 42".[15]
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 chouon, 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, is often used instead of the wave dash (波ダッシュ nami dasshu?), Unicode U+301C, because the Shift JIS code for the wave dash, 0x8160, which is supposed to be mapped to U+301C,[16][17] is not mapped to U+301C but mapped to U+FF5E[18] in code page 932 (Microsoft's code page for Japanese), a widely used extension of Shift JIS, in order to avoid the shape definition error in Unicode: the wave dash glyph in JIS/Shift JIS[19] is identical to the Unicode reference glyph for U+FF5E,[20] while the reference glyph for U+301C[21] was incorrectly turned upside down when Unicode imported the JIS wave dash. In other platforms such as Mac OS and Mac OS X, 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.
Nevertheless, the Japanese wave dash is still formally mapped to U+301C as of JIS X 0213. Those two code points have the identical or very similar 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 has been replacing 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".[22]
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 limx → ∞ f( x) ∕ g(x) = 1.[4]
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.[4]
In statistics and probability theory, the tilde means "is distributed as";[4] see random variable.
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 an accent[edit]
The symbol "" is often pronounced "eff twiddle" or, particularly in American English, "eff wiggle".[23] 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.
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.
Computing[edit]
Directories and URLs[edit]
On Unix-like operating systems (including AIX, BSD, Linux and Mac OS X), tilde normally indicates the current user's home directory. For example, if the current user's home directory is /home/bloggsj, then the command cd ~ is equivalent to cd /home/bloggsj, 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).[24]
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 web site of John Doe. This mimics the Unix shell usage of the tilde. However, when accessed from the web, file access is usually directed to a subdirectory in the user's home directory, such as /home/username/public_html or /home/username/www.[25]
In URLs, the characters ~ (or %7e) may substitute for tilde if an input device lacks a tilde key.[26] 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.
In the C, C++ and C# programming languages, the tilde character is used as bitwise NOT operator, following the notation in logic (an !
causes a logical NOT, instead). 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 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.[27] Given a String the method will produce a java.util.regex.Pattern. Given an integer it will negate the integer bitwise like in different C variants. =~
and ==~
can in Groovy be used to match a regular expression.[28][29]
In Haskell, the tilde is used in type constraints to indicate type equality.[30] Also, in pattern-matching, the tilde is used to indicate a lazy pattern match.[31]
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.[32] In Max/MSP, a tilde is used to denote objects that process at the computer's sampling rate, i.e. mainly those that deal with sound.
In Standard ML, the tilde is used as the prefix for negative numbers and as the unary negation operator.
In OCaml, the tilde is used to specify the label for a labeled parameter.
In Microsoft's SQL Server Transact-SQL (T-SQL) language, the tilde is a unary Bitwise NOT operator.
In JavaScript, the tilde is used as a unary bitwise complement (or bitwise negation) operation (~number
). Because JavaScript internally uses floats and the bitwise complement only works on integers, numbers are stripped of their decimal part before applying the operation. This has also given rise to using two tildes ~~number
as a shorthand for the mathematical floor function (numbers are stripped of their decimal part and changed into their complement, and then back. The net result is thus only the removal of the decimal part).
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.
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[citation needed] 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, probably because version control software does this better.[citation needed]
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.
Other uses[edit]
Computer programmers use the tilde in various ways and sometimes call the symbol (as opposed to the diacritic) a squiggle, squiggly, or twiddle. According to the Jargon File, other synonyms sometimes used in programming include not, approx, wiggle, enyay (after eñe) and (humorously) sqiggle /ˈskɪɡəl/. It is used in many languages as a binary inversion operator, swapping a number's binary 1's and 0's for example ~10 (binary ~1010) is equal to 5 (binary 0101).
In Perl 6, "~~" is used instead of "=~".
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)*.[33]
Keyboards[edit]
Where a tilde is on the keyboard depends on the computer's language settings according to the following chart. On many keyboards it is primarily available through a dead key that makes it possible to produce a variety of precomposed characters with the diacritic.[citation needed] In that case, a single tilde can typically be inserted with the dead key followed by the space bar, or alternatively by striking the dead key twice in a row.
To insert a tilde with the dead key, it is often necessary to simultaneously hold down the Alt Gr key. On the keyboard layouts that include an Alt Gr key, it typically takes the place of the right-hand Alt key. With a Macintosh either of the Alt/Option keys function similarly.
In the US and European Windows systems, the Alt code for a single tilde is 126
.
For Mac use option+'n' key
Keyboard | Insert a single tilde (~) | Insert a precomposed character with tilde (e.g. ã) |
---|---|---|
Arabic (Saudi) | ⇧ Shift+`ذّ | |
Croatian | Alt Gr+1 | |
Danish | Alt Gr+¨ followed by Space | Alt Gr+¨ followed by the relevant letter |
Dvorak | Alt Gr+= followed by Space, or
Alt Gr+⇧ Shift+' followed by Space |
Alt Gr+= followed by the relevant letter, or
Alt Gr+⇧ Shift+' followed by the relevant letter |
English (Australia) | ⇧ Shift+` | |
English (Canada) | ⇧ Shift+` | |
English (UK) | ⇧ Shift+# | |
English (US) | ⇧ Shift+` | Ctrl+~ followed by the relevant letter |
Faroese | Alt Gr+ð followed by Space | Alt Gr+ð followed by the relevant letter |
Finnish | Alt Gr+¨ followed by Space, or
Alt Gr+¨¨ |
Alt Gr+¨ followed by the relevant letter |
French (Canada) | Alt Gr+ç followed by Space, or
Alt Gr+çç |
Alt Gr+ç followed by the relevant letter |
French (France) | Alt Gr+é followed by Space, or
Alt Gr+éé |
Alt Gr+é followed by the relevant letter |
French (Switzerland) | Alt Gr+^ followed by Space, or
Alt Gr+^^ |
Alt Gr+^ followed by the relevant letter |
Bépo (French Dvorak) | Alt Gr+N followed by Space, or
Alt Gr+K |
Alt Gr+N followed by the relevant letter |
German (Germany) | Alt Gr++ | |
German (Switzerland) | Alt Gr+^ followed by Space, or
Alt Gr+^^ |
Alt Gr+^ followed by the relevant letter |
Hebrew (Israel) | ⇧ Shift+~ | Ctrl+⇧ Shift+~ followed by the relevant letter |
Hindi (India) | Alt Gr+⇧ Shift+ the key to the left of 1 | |
Hungarian | Alt Gr+1 | |
Icelandic | Alt Gr+' (the same key as ?) | |
Italian | ⌥ Option+5 (on Mac OS X)
Alt Gr+ì (on Linux) |
|
Norwegian | Alt Gr+¨ followed by Space, or
Alt Gr+¨¨. On Mac: Ctrl+⌥ Option+¨, or ⌥ Option+¨ followed by Space. |
Alt Gr+¨ followed by the relevant letter.
On Mac: ⌥ Option+¨ followed by the relevant letter. |
Polish | ⇧ Shift+` followed by Space,
or ⇧ Shift+`` |
The dead key is not generally used for inserting characters with tilde; when followed by {a|c|e|l|n|o|s|x|z}, it results in {ą|ć|ę|ł|ń|ó|ś|ź|ż} instead. |
Portuguese | ~ followed by Space | ~ followed by the relevant letter |
Slovak | Alt Gr+1 | |
Spanish (Spain) | Alt Gr+4 followed by Space, or
Alt Gr+44 |
Alt Gr+4 followed by the relevant letter |
Spanish (Latin America) | Alt Gr++ | |
Swedish | Alt Gr+¨ followed by Space, or
Alt Gr+¨¨ |
Alt Gr+¨ followed by the relevant letter |
Turkish | Alt Gr+ü followed by Space, or
Alt Gr+üü |
Alt Gr+ü followed by the relevant letter |
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- ^ a b tilde in the American Heritage dictionary
- ^ Several more or less common informal names are used for the tilde that usually describe the shape, including squiggly, squiggle(s), and flourish.
- ^ "Swung dash", WordNet (search) (3.0 ed.)
- ^ 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".
- ^ 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.
- ^ "26 argumentos para seguir defendiendo la Ñ". La Razón. Retrieved 31 January 2016.
- ^ AFP. "Batalla de la Ñ: Una aventura quijotesca para defender el alma de la lengua". Periódico ABC Paraguay. Retrieved 31 January 2016.
- ^ 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 Oct 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
- ^ "Other symbols", Abstract Math[better source needed]
- ^ "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 2010-07-30.
- ^ "Microsoft Word – 233cover_rev.doc" (PDF). JP: IPSJ. Retrieved 2010-07-30.
- ^ UFF00 (PDF) (chart), Unicode.
- ^ U3000 (PDF) (chart), Unicode.
- ^ Derbyshire, J (2004), Prime Obsession: Bernhard Riemann and the Greatest Unsolved Problem in Mathematics, New York: Penguin.
- ^ Choy, Stephen TL; Jesudason, Judith Packer; Lee, Peng Yee (1988). Proceedings of the Analysis Conference, Singapore 1986. Elsevier. Retrieved 11 November 2011.
- ^ "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.
- ^ "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. 2005-04-11. Retrieved 2010-07-30.
- ^ "The Internet Juggling Database". Archived from the original on 28 July 2005. Retrieved 6 November 2009.