This thing makes me nuts: ~.
This “sort” was never a part of the ol’ California job case, and I’m wondering where it came from, what it represents, and whether or not it should ever be employed as an alternative for a hyphen, en, or em dash.
I see it (mis?)-used more than I’d like to see it (at all), and I’d love to have some ammunition to stop the madness.
Please excuse me for not investigating this elsewhere (Chicago Manual of Style?) and taking the easy way out by asking the ’philes.
It can be used as sign for baptism like the asterisk for birth.
search - tilde wiki ...
Bringhurst has it as a swung dash, despite it being named asciitilde in a digital font. He says,
“A stock keyboard character used in mathematics as the sign of similarity (a ~ b) and lexicography as a sign of repetition. [...] Not to be confused with the tilde.”
Also... http://typophile.com/node/43305
It ain’t a tilde! A tilde is a diacritic.
Right. Not a tilde. That’s what I was thinking. I recognize it now as a mathematical symbol for similarity. In fact, I feel sort of dumb for not recognizing that without posting this post. I can also imagine it used as a symbol of repetition. Certainly not a hyphen, dash, or worst of all, a bullet. Thanks for answers.
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