How to type Tilde
~ is Shift + ` on a US keyboard and Shift on the key left of Enter on a UK one. Press Shift + ` on a UK keyboard and you get ¬ instead, which is the whole of why the key looks wrong: nothing is broken and the layout is simply the other one. Alt + 126 on the numeric keypad produces it on any Windows layout, which is the way in when the keyboard in front of you has no key for it, and ~ writes it in HTML. Its codepoint is U+007E.
Tilde
- Copy it
- Unicode
- U+007E
- Windows
- Alt + 126
| Where | Shortcut | How |
|---|---|---|
| Windows | Alt + 126 | Hold Alt and type the number on the numeric keypad. |
| HTML | ~ | Paste this into HTML source. |
| Unicode | U+007E | TILDE |
Other punctuation symbols
~ lives in the Basic Latin block (U+0000-U+007F), the original ASCII set: the letters, digits and punctuation printed on a US keyboard. Within Unicode it is classified as Sm, a mathematical symbol. Software may lay it out with the spacing an operator expects.
How to type ~ in Microsoft Word and on Windows
In Microsoft Word, type 007e and press Alt + X. Word reads the four characters before the cursor as a hex codepoint and replaces them, and pressing Alt + X again turns ~ back into 007e, which is the quickest way to check what a character really is.
On Windows, hold Alt and type 126 on the numeric keypad.
What Tilde is used for
~ belongs in prose rather than in an equation. LaTeX writes it \~{}, a text command, and there is no maths command for it at all: it is a sign that gets written down, not an operator that acts on anything. Putting it inside $...$ is how it comes out looking wrong.
What ~ gets confused with
Unicode's own confusables table, the one used to catch lookalike domain names, groups ~ with ˜ (U+02DC, Small Tilde). They are separate characters that render close enough to be mistaken for one another, so a search or a string comparison will separate them where your eye will not. If Tilde is not matching where you expect it to, one of these is the usual reason.
What Unicode says about Tilde
Unicode annotates ~ directly. Against U+007E the code chart carries the note “This is a spacing character”. That is the standard saying what the character is for, rather than an inference from its name.
The code chart points from ~ to small tilde (U+02DC), combining tilde (U+0303), combining tilde overlay (U+0334), swung dash (U+2053), tilde operator (U+223C) and tilde with ring above (U+2E1B). These are the characters the standard thinks you might have meant instead, which makes them the ones worth checking when Tilde looks nearly right but not quite.
How Tilde behaves in software
~ takes one column in a terminal. It carries no direction of its own, so in a line that mixes English with Arabic or Hebrew it takes the direction of the text around it rather than forcing one.
What people ask about Tilde
How to type tilde?
Shift + ` on a US keyboard, Shift on the key left of Enter on a UK one. Alt + 126 on the numeric keypad works on either.
How to type a tilde in word?
In Word, type 007e and press Alt+X, which converts the codepoint you just typed into ~. Insert › Symbol › More Symbols finds it by its Unicode name, TILDE. Google Docs has no Alt+X, so use Alt + 126 there, or Insert › Special characters and search the same name.
Every way to write Tilde
| Form | Value |
|---|---|
| Codepoint | U+007E |
| Decimal | 126 |
| UTF-8 bytes | 7E |
| UTF-16 bytes | 00 7E |
| HTML entity | ~ |
| HTML numeric | ~ or ~ |
| CSS | \007E |
| JavaScript | \u007E |
| Python | \u007E |
| URL-encoded | %7E |
| LaTeX, in prose | \~{} |
| SVG | 007E.svg · (SIL Open Font License) |
If ~ needs escaping
~ is one byte in ASCII, in UTF-8 and in every code page in common use, so it never arrives corrupted. Its problem is the opposite one: it means something to the software reading it. In HTML it can be written ~, in a URL it is %7E, and inside a CSV field, a shell command or a regular expression it has to be quoted or escaped rather than typed plainly. That is also why ~ is the character people substitute when the one they wanted will not type.