Talk:Tilde/Archive 1

Emacs first

I suspect that Emacs first used the ~ suffix when creating backup files and the GNU fileutils shell commands followed this usage. --Kop 18:55, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC) yeah(Fantana56 (talk) 22:03, 12 February 2009 (UTC))

Tilda

Realizing today that I have spelled Tilde incorrectly for quite some time, I wonder if this page could use a statement on it, or if the redirect I created will be enough. -Unsigned

Are you notable enough to warrant your habits in the article? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.181.253.68 (talk) 23:49, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Dunno, maybe as an aside you could mention that tilde is not a very phonetic spelling when talking about, for example, the etimology of the word and wherever it may originally come from. --69.212.103.184 02:26, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I noticed that Tilda redirects here. Shouldn't it go to Tilda_(software)? Sasabune 11:07, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Other wavy characters

There's a part in the article that bugs me - it states that the usage of tilde to show interval (e.g. 7~11) is a "Japanese and other Asian Languages" thing. However I think it would be more likely that there are some Asian countries that don't do this, some non-Asian countries that do this, and/or some countries that have more than one way of indicating a numerical interval. Anyone care to comment on this usage phenomenon? (Funny how this interval usage isn't mentioned in the Japanese version of Wikipedia as of now, nor in 大辞林辞典 at dictionary.goo.ne.jp either.) --69.212.103.184 02:26, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Update: it seems like the Japanese usage of the wavy line to indicate interval is actually called a "wave dash" instead of tilde. There's also a common comfusion with a wavy overline character that appears in Shift-JIS in place of the ASCII tilde character. Maybe the interval usage isn't a tilde but a character that only happens to look like a tilde. Maybe a subsection called "characters that look like the tilde" could be made. --69.212.103.184 02:39, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)

In English, there's the "swung dash", too. There difference between the swung dash, tilde, and tilde operator aren't really obvious, either. Personally, tildes are things that go over Ns, and anything else is probably derived from the swung dash. I think we'll need some typographer if we want to know the difference, though. Elektron 18:07, 2004 Nov 1 (UTC)

Can someone give a link for the use in Asian languages? Simply stating "it is so" seems less than useful. And yes, I understand the wave/swung dash and tilde difference! I recently had an occasion where someone was using text supplied by an Asian electronics manufacturer (in English) and it seems to be a clear case of "wave dash in original (Chinese) copied to tilde in English text" (used for number ranges, which I have never seen in standard English texts). But I would really like to be able to cite chapter and verse on this! Thank you! Nrubdarb (talk) 18:05, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

For usage of the Japanese wave dash (波ダッシュ, nami dasshu = 〜 or ～), see http://dic.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enwiki/8979121 and search for "nami dasshu". See also ja:波ダッシュ. —Stephen (talk) 06:00, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Spanish

Spanish speakers use the word tilde to refer not to the squiggle at the top of (Ñ), but rather to the short stroke above a vowel that in English is called an "accent". A tilde diacrítico, or "diacritic tilde", is an accent whose function is to semantically distinguish two distinct words whose spellings and often pronunciations are the same. For example, in Spanish, "el" is the masculine definite article ("el tecolote" = the owl (Mexico)), but "él" is the masculine personal pronoun ("Él no tiene dientes" = He has no teeth).

I'd like to hear from a linguist on how "tilde" came to be associated with "swung dash" in English, but "accent" in Spanish. Also, I'd like to know how Spanish distinguishes between "tilde" and "acento"--is the first the mark, and the second its effect? Or what? -Unsigned

The "tilde" is just the ortographical mark: Él (He) and El (The). The "acento" is just the syllable where the strenght falls. For instance: although the word "ejemplo" (example) doesn't have any tilde, the "acento" is strenghted on the second syllable [e 'jem plo]. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.109.51.115 (talk) 00:01, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Swung dash problem

Under Firefox on Mandriva Linux 2005LE, Monobook skin with default font, it shows just as a box. ~~ N (t/c) 23:13, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

That would be a problem with your system not having an appropriate font with that character in it. IceKarmaॐ 23:30, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Pattern match operator

The entry mentions that perl uses the operator =~ and !~ for pattern matching. I'd like to note that awk uses ~ and !~ for the same purpose, so I guess that's where the perl syntax originates from. – B jonas 20:09, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Spanish keyboard

A rather complete explanation on how to get a tilde in Spanish keyboards can be found at es:Wikipedia:FAQ#¿Y cómo hago para escribir la tilde en el teclado? No la veo por ningún lado.... --cesarb 21:33, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Google and tilde

The entry about Google needs clarification. I cannot get it to work, e.g., searching with ~horse does not work. - fnielsen 11:25, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Use on Wikipedia

Should there be something here about the uses of tilde on Wikipedia? I mean, to sign & datestamp comments and the like. I know there are guide pages for that kind of information, yet some people do find their way to this page seeking that information. And the page already discusses some fairly specific applications of the tilde. - JRtx 00:25, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

No self-references. —Nightstallion (?) 19:18, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Usually lengthened

What does "(usually lengthened to ⁓)" mean? I don't get it. --Grouse 07:26, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

I suspect there is a display bug with that symbol. On my screen, it shows up as a fat, vertical line (similar to a boldfaced l. Is that how it is supposed to look? It certainly looks nothing like a tilde. SpectrumDT 21:11, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Shows up as a larger tilde to me (similar to the one used in East Asian language encodings.) -Seventh Holy Scripture 21:49, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Internet usage of the tilduh

I always thought that a ~ at the end of a sentence meant it was sung, e.g. "Pick up the receiver, get indian tick fever~!" I suppose this can mesh with the two usages given (emphasis and extension of the syllable)... :/ Vitriol 12:34, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

It's also used when indicating sarcasm, for example, "I had relations with your mother last night." (Denoting an actual insult) versus "I had relations with your mother last night~" (denoting a sarcastic tone, jovial ribbing between friends, etc.)

It is also used as extension of a word, without adding an excessive amount of letters to it. For example, instead of, "Okayyyyyyyyy", you would write, "Okay~". That would probably tie in with the previous commment, as the use of sarcasm usually entails a longer pronunciation of the end of the word.

!

This symbol is cool and I never knew what it was called until now!! Now I'll use it to sign!! [something I never knew b4 either!!] Realg187 18:42, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Nasalization in IPA

"In the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For example, [ljɔ̃] is the transcription of the pronunciation of the word 'Lyon' in French." Is the tilde placed after the nasalized vowel in IPA (as shown above), or above it (as in Portuguese)? It would seem that placing the tilde above the vowel would make the most sense, since it affects how the vowel is pronounced rather than indicating a separate sound that follows (which is the whole point behind using a tilde rather than writing an n or other letter); however, there may not be a way to place a tilde above some vowel symbols. 207.69.139.145 16:53, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

The tilde in [ljɔ̃] is placed above the vowel. If it displays elsewhere, it is a bug in your browser or font. — Emil J. 11:18, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Used to denote a vector value

A tilde is also used in mathematics and physics to detonte a vector value or expression eg x with a tilde above is a vector with a specified direction and magnitude. |x| with a tilde above is designed to show the vector direction with a unit (1) magnitude. This is used to calculate dirrection.[vector (spatial)] —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Spgoo1 (talk • contribs) 01:41, 3 May 2007 (UTC). Spgoo1 01:42, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Approximation

I could be totally wrong here, but I thought the tilde could also be used to mark something as an approximation. In this usage, the answer to "how many people were there?" could be shortened from "between four and six" or "about five" to "~five" or "~5". Or Pi is equal to ~3.14. Like I said, I'm probably totally off. Is there another punctuation mark for this that may have gotten confused with the tilde somewhere along the line? Macbis 20:22, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

I think this is the swung dash again, as it is placed in a central position vertically (as opposed to the tilde, which is raised) but possibly it has another name. I don't know what that might be. Approximation symbol, perhaps, at a guess? — Paul G 09:01, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

You're thinking of two of them on top of each other, a cross between ~ and = which I don't know how to make on the computer. Kuronue | Talk 05:47, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Pronunciation

Why are such narrow transcriptions given for the pronunciation? I think this is quite unnecessary, and pretty much incomprehensible to the average reader. What is wrong with the broad transcription [ˈtɪldə], which is what is found in just about any dictionary that uses IPA? — Paul G 09:01, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

~Redirect

As I didn't know the spelling for this symbol, I tried searching for ~ using the wiki search bar and I got nothing. Could someone put in a redirect?--Waxsin 16:41, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

~!

I've also seen the tilde be used like ~! that (like, I really love wikipedia~!. Can anyone add what that means?72.211.130.123 09:05, 15 November 2007 (UTC)sierraa

Well I'd say thats a typo, but the writer may have meant also that the exclamation mark "streches" to louder voice like in japanese or what that language was were they wrote to instant messenger some message and put the tilde to make the last vowel long. Lauriwriter (talk) 11:52, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Ugly table

Isn't there a standard when it comes to tables like the ones on the bottom of this article? That's one ugly table. --Eikern (talk) 09:04, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

I've removed it entirely. It's not adding anything to the article which couldn't be obtained by, like, looking at the keyboard. Chris Cunningham (talk) 10:01, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

I disagree on whether it’s adding much: I find such things in Wikipedia immensely useful and am sure others do too. Unencyclopedic or otherwise, information of this sort makes Wikipedia better than traditional encyclopedias, and I see no reason to be bound by their weaknesses as well as their strengths. This “unencyclopedic” facet of Wikipedia is one of those that, in my opinion, makes up for the shortcomings of traditional ones.

If the problem is ugliness, then wouldn't figuring out a way to make it look better be a more positive contribution that just zapping it? Regards, Jim_Lockhart (talk) 14:06, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

But it's pointless prescription of a subject which is completely disinteresting from a factual point of view. The article on sandwiches doesn't describe the process of making a prawn sandwich, although this is undoubtedly also an area in which Wikipedia would be a pioneer in the realm of encyclopaedias.

Just a random handful of problems:

1. The subject is trivial and self-evident. Keyboards generally have the symbols, like, printed on top of them, so it's nothing new to users who need the information, and it's of no use to anyone else.
2. The collection is arbitrary and indiscriminate. There are hundreds of different keymaps.
3. The section is prescriptive; it offers advice and instructions. This is not appropriate for an encyclopedia.
4. The lack of such a section on other articles on symbols found on keyboards makes Wikipedia inconsistent. Why do other keyboard symbols not have such tables on their articles? Is the tilde special in some way?
5. It's huge and ugly. This, sadly, is the least of its problems.

"unencyclopedic or otherwise" is a red flag. Wikipedia is not a random collection of things which people might find helpful. it is not meant to be a repository of the sum of all human knowledge (etymological nitpicking concerning the word "encyclopedia" notwithstanding). making it pretty would not make it appropriate. it should go. Chris Cunningham (talk) 14:29, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

The chart describes how the keyboard works regarding to the tilde and that is encyclopedic, and there's similar kind of information on pages about some special keys. The keyboard does not tell you that about the tilde, only with some keyboards it's so simple that it practically does, but with some others it's too complicated especially for those who are unfamiliar with computers. In that way the tilde is different from many other symbols which are printed on keyboards. Best regards Rhanyeia♥♫ 13:53, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

P with tilde

I noticed a reference to "P with tilde" under "See Also" and wondered why the use of 'P with tilde' is not included in section 'Diacritical use' under 'Languages and alphabets that use the tilde for other purposes'? Since Wikipedia article "P with tilde" states:

It is or was used as a grapheme in some languages of Vanuatu, such as North Efate, South Efate and Namakura, to represent a voiceless labial-velar stop (IPA: /k͡p/).

The letter was introduced by missionaries and has been in use for over a hundred years.

In Bislama, the lingua franca of Vanuatu, p with tilde is called snekpi, "snake-P".

FriendlyDutch (talk) 10:55, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Swung dash as punctuation?

The article claims in the Punctuation section that the swung dash is sometimes used in English to indicate ranges instead of an en-dash. I’ve read lots of style and typography manuals in my time and never seen any that recommended this usage. I know that people use swung dashes for this purpose in handwritten English, but have never seen it in professionally typeset English material, so I think this statement needs to be substantiated with a citation as per WP:ATT or removed. Opinions? Jim_Lockhart (talk) 12:54, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Use in logic and math

"In written mathematical logic, it represents negation (e.g. "~p" equals "not p".) Modern use has been replacing the tilde with the exclamation mark (!) for this purpose, to avoid confusion with equivalence relations."

Doesn't use of the exclamation mark, at least in mathematical discussions, potentially lead to another problem, since an exclamation mark placed after a number means the product of that number and all positive integers less than it? (E.g., 4! (read "four factorial")=4*3*2*1=24) 66.234.220.195 (talk) 07:14, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

An exclamation point before a symbol is notation, after is factorial. BTW, I thought the tilde was only used for negation as a substitute for ¬ when the proper negation symbol is unavailable. Is this true? — Gwalla | Talk 15:45, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Truly ugly table

I think someone could make a nicer table. This has just gray colors. I can't think of a better color, maybe someone else could. --Bochkov (talk) 01:22, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Careful with different characters

A caveat: there are several wavy characters (notably: tilde, swung dash, wave dash), which are used for different purposes. Calling them all “tilde” is rather confusing to novices, so I’d suggest carefully distinguishing them. For instance, the tilde-like character used in East Asia, particularly Japan, is 〜, Unicode: U+301C, “WAVE DASH”, not properly a “tilde”. Nbarth (email) (talk) 23:30, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Article topic

I had the contradict template up, which I see has been fixed (Thank you Nbarth), but this article still bugs me. The article is named "Tilde," yet it encompasses all wavy characters, without much discretion in separating them and making their difference as clear as I would have liked. After all they are separate characters, and grouping them together may be perfectly acceptable for clarity purposes (to help avoid confusion), but there must be a more organized way to present this info. I'm almost tempted to put up a rewrite template for a couple of these sections, but I'll hold off to see if I can help a bit first... RShnike (talk) 00:22, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Māori language uses 'macrons' for many vowels

In New Zealand, the Māori language uses a macron over many vowels. With the Māori keyboard installed, the tilde key needs to be typed, before the vowel, to create the macron. I don't know if that should be mentioned on the tilde page. 202.36.154.162 (talk) 03:03, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

It shouldn't be. Its only connection to the tilde is a quirk of a particular keyboard layout (it could be typed with any layout, so long as it makes macrons available). — Gwalla | Talk 16:23, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

"spanish" is really castellian

"Spanish" is not the official name of the language, the official name is castellian. I imagine the other spanish dialects also use ñ, although I'm not an expert. They should probably be included in the list, and spanish should be included as spanish(castellian). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.249.200.3 (talk) 02:21, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

This is already explained on the Spanish language article, so please stop changing it. At international level, spanish is called just "spanish". Whenever you are at your home, call it whatever you wish.--79.109.51.115 (talk) 00:03, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

I replaced some Spanish with CASTILIAN which is the right expression. (Brizz89 (talk) 22:46, 2 November 2008 (UTC)).

Don't "replace" anything please, just read the spanish language article and stop saying nonsense.--79.109.51.115 (talk) 00:05, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Latin Americna Spanish and Castilian Spanish uses a tilde, and they are the exact same. So why complain? Joe9320 of the Wikipedia Party | Contact Assembly of Jimbo Wales 07:36, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Tilde, the diacritical mark

I suggest, that we'd make an own article for the diacritical mark (˜) of tilde, because it is actually another character and it would be more like the other articles about diacritical mark. There is already similar situation with circumflex and caret. And anyway the article Tilde-article doesn't actually list the all character combinations made with it (like two diacritical marks in one character). Lauriwriter (talk) 11:45, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Where is the Tilde diacritic mark on modified letters?

I really need it! This isn't the article I'm searching for.--Mahmudmasri (talk) 04:53, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

The image

The image isn't tilde, a tilde is this ´, and your use is for example this canción (song). --190.93.144.10 (talk) 22:19, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Use as diacritic

The tilde is sometimes used as a diacritic above a letter. I think some people have already brought this up. It shows up in the template on the right of that article. This template is embedded on the individual articles for diacritics. It is not currently embedded in this one. Would anyone be adverse to including it? Where would the best spot be? I want to introduce it but I don't want to make it look messy. Tyciol (talk) 18:08, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Pronunc

I have a problem with this: 'pronounced "TILL-duh" (IPA /'tɪldə/) or "TILL-day".' The IPA transcription clearly shows a schwa on the end of the word. That would indicate that it's pronounced 'TILL-duh', like the name 'Tilda'. What's more, MSN's Encarta dictionary has the 'TILL-duh' pron.

Yes, the second pronunciation (ˈtɪldeɪ, removed) is not used in English, as a look in dictionaries[1] shows. Somebody was apparently confused by the pronunciation in other languages and tried to record an English approximation of it. --Espoo (talk) 06:06, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Tilde in Swedish

I remember reading somewhere that in handwriting Swedish uses the tilde instead of the umlaut, so that ö and ä are writen by hand as õ and ã. Is this true, and if so, wouldn't it deserve a mention in the "Diacritical use" section? --Thrissel (talk) 22:51, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

404

There is a 404 on references #3 and #1. Can someone who know how to fix it, erm... fix it please? --Habstinator (talk) 02:37, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

I was able to fix #3. No luck with #1. When you find links that don't work and you can't fix, the best thing to do is add a {{dead link|date=...}} tag to them (filling in the month and day for the date). rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 02:44, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Complex Numbers?

A diacritical tilde is sometimes used to denote a variable which takes on complex values. I would add that to the article myself, but I suspect it is tied up with its use to identify a Fourier transform, since the Fourier transform of a real-valued quantity is complex. But I'm not sure whether the Fourier transform sense grew out of the complex sense, or vice versa. SarahLawrence Scott (talk) 16:21, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

Approximation - contradiction

The article contradicts itself (between Common use and Mathematics) on the use of tilde as an approximation - both regarding "x ~ y" as meaning "of the same order of magnitude" and something like "~30 minutes" meaning "approximately 30 minutes". It also contradicts the article List of mathematical symbols. Citations as to what's correct, please? Thanks! Allens (talk) 14:16, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

The symbol means different things in different contexts. It's not a "contradiction", it's just that there isn't a unique meaning. Both can be correct. Jowa fan (talk) 00:24, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Oops, the previous comment was based only on a reading of the "Mathematics" section (which I've now reorganised so that the issue is irrelevant). I've just looked at the "common use" section. Personally I'd advocate the deletion of that section. It's certainly the case that people do use ~ to represent approximation, even if someone out there says they shouldn't be doing it! Jowa fan (talk) 00:51, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Understand; thanks for the reorg! I wouldn't advocate deleting the information that people use "~30", for example, to mean "about 30". Allens (talk) 02:26, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Mac keyboards

The table for typing ~ seems to be MS Windows orientated, on Mac OSX keyboards it's often simpler: in the UK and Greek keyboard it's shift ` (the key next to the LH shift key), in the German keyboard it's Alt shift 8 (or option shift 8 if you prefer). Haven't set my mac up to US keyboard so don't know that one offhand. . dave souza, talk 21:00, 9 January 2012 (UTC) tweaked 21:09, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Informal terminology

I would argue for CitationNeeded for "twiddle" and "wiggle". I was a maths major for my B.Sc. and I don't recall either term being used when reading equations. (Admittedly New Zealand English is a minority dialect.) This usage is not mentioned for either term in Mirriam Webster, and Wolfram notes it as "informal" which is a formal way of saying "slang". 17:50, 11 November 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Martin Kealey (talk • contribs)

Sounds like Wolfram has just verified them for you. Terms don't have to meet some definition of "formal" to be worth noting. —me_and 22:39, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

More precisely, Wolfram notes "twiddle" as «... In informal usage, "tilde" is often instead voiced as "twiddle" (Derbyshire 2004, p. 45)» However that is in the context of suffix-tilde, not superposition-tilde; and it makes no note of "wiggle" at all.

01:53, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

tilde in logic notation

what about the role of tilda as a negation sign in logical notation? for example, formalizing the expression "notp" as "~p"? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.179.168.178 (talk) 08:44, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Telephony

I've seen ~ used in what are unquestionably telephone numbers. Is it a mistake or a version of a dash? 104.229.142.212 (talk) 18:47, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Inverted wave dash issue has been fixed in Unicode 8.0

I don't have spare time enough to update this article part, this is just informative if somebody wants to amend this section. 186.176.126.155 (talk) 14:43, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

Organization needs attention

This article reads like it was written by a committee, and in a sense it was: somebody worked on the mathematics part, someone else on the Unicode questions, another on linguistics, and so on. The article as a whole is not well organized. deisenbe (talk) 11:47, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

History section unreferenced / tilde standing for Spanish

As far as I can tell, the initial parts of the section make valid and interesting points, but it fails to cite any sources, other than by linking to other Wikipedia pages. This is not enough but I'd rather let an expert handle it.

The subsection on the Spanish use of tilde, however, is rather lacking: often repetitive, with content unrelated to the article, and making strong claims with no citations. E.g.:

The "ñ" is only found on Spanish language keyboards. It is uniquely Spanish. How to alphabetize it (whether to treat it as an "n") is a uniquely Spanish problem. (In practice it has been abandoned, as we moved from looking words up in books to computer queries. Alphabetization is today - 2016 - a concern only of programmers, and they are not particularly interested in the philosophy of languages. The English of the original 128-character ASCII rules, under a veneer of Unicode inplementation.) Of the visible part of languages - their character sets - the "ñ" and only the "ñ" is uniquely Spanish.

I am therefore heavily editing that part and separating it from history, as it is not strictly a historical question.

MiG-25 (talk) 12:42, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

Disagree with deletion regarding Spanish connection

The following has been deleted or heavily rewritten. I copied this from an earlier version of this page. The wikilinks and Italic have vanished.

---

The tilde becomes a patriotic icon/glyph in Spain

The tilde has historically been associated with Spanish in popular consciousness, especially in the pre-digital (pre-computer) era. By far, the only way a lay reader would see the tilde used is over the n in common Spanish words such as mañana (tomorrow or morning), which has become a word in English, always tolerant of new words.

The Spanish alphabet presented some unique characteristics to challenge early computer designers. The Spanish language has, since the eighteenth century, been governed by a quasi-governmental agency, the Royal Spanish Academy, sometimes called the Academy of the Spanish Language. Made up of writers, professors, and the like, it is highly respected and without challenge to its authority, at least in Spain.

This learned body made decisions for linguistic and sometimes philosophical reasons. In an era in which all indexing was done (very slowly, and by today's standards very incompletely) by humans, it was not a conceptual challenge to declare that the "ch" constituted a single character (they called it "letter"), which came after "c" and before "d". In the same way, the "ll" came after "l" and before "m". The body decided something by no means obvious in its context: that the "ñ" was a distinct letter from the "n", which it followed. With the arrival of digital technology this quickly collapsed; the fiction that the ch and the "ll" are each one letter has been officially abandoned with little controversy. The case was different with the "ñ". Since it was a key on mechanical Spanish keyboards, the decision was made to assign it a position in early character sets. Alphabetization was not addressed at the time, and remains an unresolved issue in Spain.

The "ñ" is only found on Spanish language keyboards. It is uniquely Spanish. How to alphabetize it (whether to treat it as an "n") is a uniquely Spanish problem. (In practice it has been abandoned, as we moved from looking words up in books to computer queries. Alphabetization is today - 2016 - a concern only of programmers, and they are not particularly interested in the philosophy of languages. The English of the original 128-character ASCII rules, under a veneer of Unicode inplementation.) Of the visible part of languages - their character sets - the "ñ" and only the "ñ" is uniquely Spanish. Therefore - and questions like this are taken seriously in Spain - it was a uniquely Spanish visible symbol. The Instituto Cervantes, another quasi-governmental body, chose it as its icon. The "n" and "ñ" differ only in the tilde, and Spanish writers are clear that it is the tilde, not the "ñ" of itself, that is being celebrated. The tilde is now discussed in newspaper articles, which us where Spain's thinkers communicate, and it is (newly) part of the nation's heritage. For further details see ñ.

---

I wrote the above and believe it is accurate and important, even though it gets a little tangential in places. Yes, it doesn't have references (though the whole section on mechanical typewriters, which I also wrote and has even fewer references, was left intact). Thanks to whoever came up with the excellent illustrations.

I have better things to do with my time than search for references for things I know to be true. I have a Ph.D. in Spanish. I'll send you a photo of my diploma if you want; Brown currently charges $17.50 for degree confirmation and will not do it over the phone. I taught the History of the Spanish Language many times, at the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill) and Florida State University, at the latter of which I was Distinguished Research Professor (picture of certificate on request). I am a somewhat well-known American writer on Spanish topics. You can verify that by going to http://catalog.loc.gov or http://worldcat.org and inputting my name ("Eisenberg, Daniel, 1946-"). I am aware that WP does not pay attention to credentials, and by WP policy with which I strongly disagree, original research is not wanted. Well over 50% of WP has no documentation. If we can't use a Wikipedia page as a source, why should anyone else use it, if it's that unreliable? We don't trust WP? Do you know it's easy to create fraudulent, unexposable references? I am not putting how here or anywhere else, nor have I done it. But I've thought about it. As David Letterman said, "bite me". deisenbe (talk) 20:39, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

I very much agree with the deletions. You added a lot of text, but it was almost all peripheral to the actual topic, and had the tone of a rant-essay not an encyclopedia. (In particular, anything to do with sorting 'ch' and 'll' has simply nothing to do with the tilde, and sorting 'n' and 'ñ' as separate letters is the default behaviour, since they have different character representations.) If anything I think the editing has not gone far enough. For example, the last edit changed the claim that ("the Ñ, and with it..."/) the tilde "has traditionally stood for" the Spanish language to "can be taken to stand for...". I still don't understand what this is supposed to mean: language codes, "es", for example "stand for languages"; flags stand for countries; and in lots of languages there are distinctive bits -- for example the 'ij' in Dutch, often written to look like a disjointed y-umlaut -- but I do not think it has a normal clear meaning in English to claim anything to do with "standing for". Imaginatorium (talk) 07:31, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

I can accept what you say about ch and ll. But the ñ is different. Yes, it is a separate code, in some character sets. But in no character set I know of is the code for the ñ in between the n and the o codes. It sorts after z, unless special programming is used with each application, and that won't happen, other than demonstration examples, because it's prohibitively expensive. (Recent versions of Unicode permit any "sorting order" to be specified; see Unicode collation algorithm.) And only Spaniards and to a lesser extent other Spanish speakers care about the question.

I stand on saying the ñ is a symbol for the Spanish language. It's totally different from .es. .es is not thought of by anybody as a national symbol. That's why the Instituto Cervantes, whose function is disseminating the Spanish language, chose the tilde as its insignia. The ij is never, to my knowledge since I don't read Dutch, discussed in the press as a question of of Dutch identity. It is true that any language with special characters (like Swedish) has sorting problems. But in no other language, with the possible exception of Chinese - Taiwan and China use different character sets - is it linked to national pride, nor is it so discussed in articles in the press. An entire alphabet, such as Cyrillic, can be. But on a single character, only Spanish. Part of the reason is that Spanish has only this one special character, whereas languages such as Swedish and Turkish have several. deisenbe (talk) 12:02, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

The Ñ has indeed been a "focus of pride" for (some?) Spanish speakers. As a result, just like flags and other such identity symbols, it has been used to stand for the language. The images in the article show that, in this usage, the ñ can be reduced to just the tilde. In addition to what I left/added to the article, Deisenbe has already mentioned a few reasons for all this, backed by considerable credentials, which I have no reason to doubt. I am a Spaniard myself (with a PhD but neither in Spanish nor on Spanish), if that counts for anything. The main point, however, is that this article is about the tilde and quite messy already. Most of the discussion about the 'ñ', while extremely interesting, is immaterial and detrimental to it. MiG-25 (talk) 17:44, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

pitch and tone

As speaking about what I think the same, shouldn't the parts for Ancient Greek and Vietnamese be together? ※ Sobreira ◣◥ ፧ (parlez)⁇﹖ 11:05, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

Tildes on Wikipedia

Should this article point out that the tilde should be familiar to many Wikipedians, who sign their username by pressing four tildes?Vorbee (talk) 17:47, 1 June 2018 (UTC) Or do you think that would be better covered on the article on Wikipedia?Vorbee (talk) 09:58, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

This is included in the article with the following text - "In MediaWiki syntax, four tildes are used as a shortcut for a user's signature." The only problem is that it is uncited. What RS's can be used for this sentence? Henry Hannon (talk) 05:19, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

singsong chat modifier

from how I understand it, modern usage includes a suffix ~ to indicate a "singsong" voice to the line/word. should this kind of thing be included in the article? FallingBullets (talk) 14:23, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

"Tidle" listed at Redirects for discussion

A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Tidle. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 January 6#Tidle until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Seventyfiveyears (talk) 18:55, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

Need coding help

I have rewritten the section on mechanical typewriters. It needs cleanup from someone who knows how to code stand-alone superscript and infrascript glyphs, like the acute accent and the cedilla.

Note that there are three different tilde locations:

1. The familiar ~, centered vertically on a lower-case letter, like a hyphen
2. The ~ as it would be if located over a lower-case letter.
3. The ~ as it would be if located over an upper-case letter.

I could probably dig these out, but I hope someone reading this has them at their fingertips. Thanks. deisenbe (talk) 15:41, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure that what you want actually exists. The position of your #1 is font dependent. Your #2 and #3 are most often seen as precomposed characters. The combining tilde does exist but typically has to parsed to match the associated symbol to be accented.

• U+007E ~ TILDE is the "ASCII tilde" which for me lines up with the top bar of the E, not the centre bar.
• U+223C ∼ TILDE OPERATOR (∼, ∼, ∼, ∼) is closer but but not quite the same level as a minus
• U+0303 ̃ COMBINING TILDE
• U+0330 ̰ COMBINING TILDE BELOW is a wiggly underline, not midline,
• U+FF5E ～ FULLWIDTH TILDE is from the CJK set so unlikely to be relevant.

So you pays your money but you don't gets your choice. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 16:03, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

@Deisenbe:, next time you have an awkward issue like this, please use the talk page first rather than make a regurgitated dog's breakfast of the main page for someone else to clean up. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 16:32, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

No Citation Needed

In the following paragraph it says that a citation is needed. If you try it in your web browser on any Linux web account, it works. No citation needed.

"In URLs, the characters %7E (or %7e) may substitute for tilde if an input device lacks a tilde key.[citation needed] Thus, http://www.example.com/~johndoe/ and http://www.example.com/%7Ejohndoe/ will behave in the same manner."

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.110.94.228 (talk) 07:31, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Technically, "just try it!" amounts to WP:OR. —Tamfang (talk) 01:41, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Nevertheless, it's a trivial instance of percent encoding. The authoritative WP:RS is RFC3986.—Emil J. 11:38, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

At what point does it get silly?!? In the statement "California gets twice as much snow as Colorado because California is next to the Pacific Ocean" I can understand the need to cite the fact that California does indeed get twice as much snow or the scientific reason why being close to a large body of water effects the amount of snow you get, but do you have to cite that California is next to an ocean or the fact that the name of that ocean is named the Pacific Ocean? I read the WP:OR article and did not see where it says how much citation is just being silly. It might be argued that because only X% or users are on a Unix based machine you have to cite it, but in the Windows_key article it does not cite the fact that you can use the CTRL+ESC combination instead of using the windows key. --Billy Nair (talk) 01:15, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

This is an incredibly old thread, but I'm still very interested in when citation goes so far Inkybinky3 (talk) 20:37, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

Informal Usage

Is there a way to include, from my experience at least, the more common informal usage of the Tilde to indicate tone? ie. Including it at the end of a sentence to indicate a cutesy, sing-song, or wavering tone. I don't know if there's any possible way to include this that doesn't violate WP:OR, and I don't even know if this is appropriate encyclopaedic content. Inkybinky3 (talk) 20:37, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

There are similar things at number sign (#), so it wouldn't be seriously inappropriate. (The relevant policy is wp:TRIVIA.) Your bigger challenge is to find a reliable source because, as you surmised correctly, to record your own observations fails wp:OR. Happy hunting! --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 23:04, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

IIRC Gretchen McCulloch's Because Internet touches on this. Irony punctuation also could use that source. Nardog (talk) 02:48, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

Violating WP:OR won’t immediately delete your change, but a template will appear at the top. Your edit may be deleted if you or other editors don’t take necessary action. You can add whatever you know about Informal Usage of Tilde, but it should be correct with the correct citation(s).SidChat2048 (talk) 08:05, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

+Uses of Tilde in Wikipedia

Uses of Tilde in Wikipedia should be added as a content in this article. This change maintains convenience to the reader. SidChat2048 (talk) 07:54, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

Please keep in mind that Wikipedia articles are written for a general audience, not specifically for Wikipedia editors or as a how-to. The usage of tildes on Wikipedia is not really notable for the subject of tildes. There already is a hatnote at the top of the page pointing to WP:Signatures, which is more than enough. Opencooper (talk) 15:55, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

How to get a tilde with your national keyboard

Wikipedia is not a manual or a version of Wikihow. The article is already too long so have cut this table from the article and am pasting it here in case anybody needs it.

Keyboard	Insert a single tilde (~)	Insert a precomposed character with tilde (e.g. ã)
Arabic (Saudi Arabia)	⇧ Shift+`ذّ
Croatian	Alt Gr+1
Czech	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+#	AltGr+# followed by the relevant letter (UK-extended layout, Chrome OS)
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 ⌥ Option+n (on Mac OS X)	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) Alt+126 (on Windows)
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 (on Windows) On Linux: Alt Gr+4, or Alt Gr+¡ followed by Space. On Mac: Ctrl+⌥ Option+Ñ, or ⌥ Option+Ñ followed by Space.	Alt Gr+4 (on Windows) followed by the relevant letter. Alt Gr+¡ (on Linux) followed by the relevant letter. On Mac: ⌥ Option+Ñ 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

If anybody wants to argue for its retention in the article, please do so here. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 15:31, 1 April 2022 (UTC)