Significance of Symbol "~"

[Guest Jawnny]

Perhaps I seem ignorant for asking but I have seen ~ preceding

and following signature names of posters in this format and do not

understand the significance. Can anyone clarify for me?

 

Jawnny

[+ deej]

RE: Significance of Symbol

 

It's art.

 

In a message body, "~12" could be read as "about a dozen". (Or in this venue, "~8" would be "about 8 inches". :9) Everywhere else, it's just text decoration.

 

You see, in the early days of the internet (before we had pictures everywhere) people used linedraw characters to mimic visuals. I've seen some pretty amazing ASCII-Art, as it was known. In fact, a friend with a warped sense of humor taught herself a programming language by writing a program to display a dog marching band entirely drawn with line art. She used to have the *best* sigs.

 

I doubt you're missing any hidden meaning.

[Guest showme43]

RE: Significance of Symbol

 

thought @ was "about" symbol (or "at")

 

Rick

:o

[+ deej]

RE: Significance of Symbol

 

I've never seen @ used for anything other than "at" (or, as I said, art).

 

If memory serves, the original typographical meaning of @ is actually "at", as in "2 @ $2.95" for invoices & such.

[JamesK840]

Tildes rock!

 

I've heard @ was originally short for 'at the rate of'.

 

~ (which is a tilde) is often used to reflect approximate, I'm not sure it was put there for that, but it does look like the mathematical symbol for approximate (a wavy equals sign).

[Bilbo]

RE: Tildes rock!

 

Perhaps we should mention that when used in Spanish over an "n" it adds a bit of what English speakers would think of as a "y" sound to the "n". So many computers make a hash of my own last name by leaving out the apostrophe that I can easily imagine a Spanish surnamed person getting tired of his own name being misspelled by leaving out the tilde.

[+ deej]

RE: Tildes rock!

 

>~ (which is a tilde) is often used to reflect approximate, I'm

>not sure it was put there for that, but it does look like the

>mathematical symbol for approximate (a wavy equals sign).

 

It actually has a linguistic meaning which escapes me, but it "made it" on the computer keyboard (where the cent symbol is, alas, a thing of the past) because it's used in many programming languages. And these days, it's also a delimiter in web addresses.

 

And Bilbo, lack of using é or ñ is just ugly Americans not taking the time or effort to learn a) the keycodes or b) the Windows CharMap utility (or the equivalent on other operating systems). ;-) Anyone who really WANTS to do so can and should spell your name properly.

 

Globalization of computer software (and hardware) is a study in and of itself. Just allowing for varying keyboard layouts can be a nightmare. MANY programs break, for example, on French keyboards. The top row, the numerics, is reversed. The unshifted keys have characters like ç è, and the shifted position has the numerics.

[JamesK840]

Just my 2¢...

 

Character map is fun. Having to use the previously assumed worthless numlock on a laptop keyboard to type in the signs isn't.

[+ deej]

RE: Just my 2¢...

 

Yep. And early Mac Powerbook notebooks didn't even have the Fn-key-enabled embedded numeric keypad. You couldn't get there from here.

 

(And they're still my favorite notebook!)

[AaronScottDC]

RE: Tildes rock!

 

>I've heard @ was originally short for 'at the rate of'.

>

>~ (which is a tilde) is often used to reflect approximate, I'm

>not sure it was put there for that, but it does look like the

>mathematical symbol for approximate (a wavy equals sign).

>

 

In Geometry, the single tilde (~) means "is similar to". For example, triangle ABC ~ triangle DEF if they are the same shape (equal angle measures) but different sizes (different side lengths).

 

Two tildes, one over top of the other, means "approximately equal to", as mentioned in the message above as a "wavy equals sign".

 

And, finally, an equals sign with a tilde above it represents "is congruent to". Two triangles are congruent if they have the same size and shape (equal angle measures and equal side lengths).

 

Just some fun math facts from your freindly neighborhood dumb ho....... oh, wait a minute, that is Rick's line! Sorry Rick

 

 

Aaron Scott DC

http://www.erados.com/AaronScottDC

http://www.male4malescorts.com/reviews/aaronscottdc.html

[VaHawk]

RE: Tildes rock!

 

"It actually has a linguistic meaning which escapes me, but it "made it" on the computer keyboard (where the cent symbol is, alas, a thing of the past) because it's used in many programming languages."

 

A very astute observation deej. Give me the damn cent symbol again!!

The very first time I went use it and it wasn't there, I kept looking at the keyboard and cursing that "where the hell are you, you've been there my whole life!". As an IT person, I definitely need that cent sign one helluva lot more than the tilde sign!

 

Sorry, but you touched on one of my pet peeves. Standardize the damn keyboard to the qwerty method, as that is what most of us learned on! If I need something different, then I can go map the keyboard to be something different!

[Guest pyell]

RE: Tildes rock!

 

I don't know where people get the idea that keyboards are standardised around the world.

 

I went to Argentina and Peru in August. Could I find a keyboard with "@" on it anywhere? As it turns out, it's there, but it throws up on the screen a different symbol - but the computer recognises it as the English version. Bizarre.

[Steven_Draker]

RE: Significance of Symbol

 

A tilde is a special typographic character found on most keyboards. In some operating systems, including UNIX, the tilde is used to represent the current user's home directory. On Web server systems, the tilde is frequently used by convention as the first character for any user's home directory in the file system. Since users often keep personal or business Web pages on a server under their personal home directory, you will often see the tilde as part of Web addresses.

 

The tilde is one of the 128 alphanumeric and special characters in the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII), the most common standard for electronic text exchange. The tilde happens to be ASCII character 126. It's sometimes called a "twiddle" or a "squiggle." :o

[Steven_Draker]

RE: Tildes rock!

 

>Globalization of computer software (and hardware) is a study

>in and of itself. Just allowing for varying keyboard layouts

>can be a nightmare. MANY programs break, for example, on

>French keyboards. The top row, the numerics, is reversed. The

>unshifted keys have characters like ç è, and the shifted

>position has the numerics.

 

Very good point, deej !

We use « AZERT » keyboard in Belgium which is the same for France.

The “spanish keyboard” in Spain has different characters.

 

When you travel internationally you need to adapt quickly on different keyboards

unless you carry your own laptop.

[Bilbo]

RE: Actually Irish

 

While I don't mind being mistaken for Hispanic, I'm actually Irish. My name has an apostrophe in it which you don't have to hit anything special to type in. But, for one example, I have to remember to leave it out when I'm charging something since the credit card company won't recognize my name when I put it in! If my name were O'Reilly, which it isn't, they would spell it Oreilly. The same holds true for a number of charities. Any free return address labels that seem to think that the O is my middle initial, as in O Reilly, or even O. Reilly, go straight to the circular file.

[Guest EWC]

RE: Significance of Symbol

 

The key to picking up any of the ascii symbols is to depress the alt key and then the three digit number. For example to do your cents sign you would hold down the alt key and type 155 al la ¢. Following are the signs for whatever font this is, but you can copy this and change the font to whatever you use alot like times roman or arial.

 

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

! “ # $ % & ‘ 030

( ) * + , - . / 0 1 040

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 : ; 050

< = > ? @ A B C D E 060

F G H I J K L M N O 070

P Q R S T U V W X Y 080

Z [ \ ] ^ _ ` a b c 090

d e f g h i j k l m 100

n o p q r s t u v w 110

x y z { | } ~ ⌂ Ç ü 120

é â ä à å ç ê ë è ï 130

î ì Ä Å É æ Æ ô ö ò 140

û ù ÿ Ö Ü ¢ £ ¥ ₧ ƒ 150

á í ó ú ñ Ñ ª º ¿ ⌐ 160

½ ¼ ¡ « » ░ ▒ ▓ │ 170

┤ ╡ ╢ ╖ ╕ ╣ ║ ╗ ╝ ╜ 180

╛ ┐ └ ┴ ┬ ├ ─ ┼ ╞ ╟ 190

╚ ╔ ╩ ╦ ╠ ═ ╬ ╧ ╨ ╤ 200

╥ ╙ ╘ ╒ ╓ ╫ ╪ ┘ ┌ █ 210

▄ ▌ ▐ ▀ α ß Γ π Σ σ 220

µ τ Φ Θ Ω δ ∞ φ ε ∩ 230

≡ ± ≥ ≤ ⌠ ⌡ ÷ ≈ ° ∙ 240

• √ ⁿ ² ■ Ā ā Ă ă 250

Ą ą Ć ć Ĉ ĉ Ċ ċ Č č 260

Ď ď Đ đ Ē ē Ĕ ĕ Ė ė 270

Ę ę Ě ě Ĝ ĝ Ğ ğ Ġ ġ 280

Ģ ģ Ĥ ĥ Ħ ħ Ĩ ĩ Ī ī 290

Ĭ ĭ Į į İ ı IJ ij Ĵ ĵ 300

Ķ ķ ĸ Ĺ ĺ Ļ ļ Ľ ľ Ŀ 310

L Ł ł Ń ń Ņ ņ Ň ň ʼn 320

Ŋ ŋ Ō ō Ŏ ŏ Ő ő Œ œ 330

Ŕ ŕ Ŗ ŗ Ř ř Ś ś Ŝ ŝ 340

Ş ş Š š Ţ ţ Ť ť Ŧ ŧ 350

Ũ ũ Ū ū Ŭ ŭ Ů ů Ű ű 360

Ų ų Ŵ ŵ Ŷ ŷ Ÿ Ź ź Ż 370

ż Ž ž ſ ƀ Ɓ Ƃ ƃ Ƅ ƅ 380

Ɔ Ƈ ƈ Ɖ Ɗ Ƌ ƌ ƍ Ǝ Ə 390

Ɛ Ƒ ƒ Ɠ Ɣ ƕ Ɩ Ɨ Ƙ ƙ 400

ƚ ƛ Ɯ Ɲ ƞ Ɵ Ơ ơ Ƣ ƣ 410