# How do you use the Tilde? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [February 21, 2005, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-use-the-tilde/291231 "2005-02-21T20:50:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2005, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-use-the-tilde/291231/21 "2005-02-23T01:45:38Z")
We all need to be aware that cruel curves of the tilde owe their origin to the Spanish inquisition. Designed by the sons of Torquemada shortly before the last auto de fe near Acapulco in the late 1600s, the tilde is barely surpassed by the practice of the Strapanado, spasination, and the Judas cradle for their inhumane cruelty. Once typed, the tilde was heated to a white flame and used to flense the skin the flesh from the bones of it’s victims. Ever since the tilde reins supreme as a symbol of man’s capacity for evil, and those who dare invoke it reveal themselves for their religious intolerance, inhumanity, and mercenary anti-semitism. ---
**Author:** ![SandyHook](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dec6dc/32.png) [@SandyHook](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SandyHook)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2005, 5:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-use-the-tilde/291231/22 "2005-02-23T05:14:31Z")
It can be used when trying to include Vietnamese words such as My~ (which means America) in something you’re writing. ---
**Author:** ![WeRSauron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/f19dbf/32.png) [@WeRSauron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WeRSauron)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2005, 5:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-use-the-tilde/291231/23 "2005-02-23T05:40:34Z")
> [@Scylla](#): > > We all need to be aware that cruel curves of the tilde owe their origin to the Spanish inquisition. ```auto WRS ``` ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2005, 5:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-use-the-tilde/291231/24 "2005-02-23T05:43:55Z")
> [@Scylla](#): > > Once typed, the tilde was heated to a white flame and used to flense the skin the flesh from the bones of it’s victims. Sometimes in their agony, they even committed solecisms like putting an apostrophe in a possessive “its”! 😛 ---
**Author:** ![matt\_mcl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@matt\_mcl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt_mcl)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2005, 6:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-use-the-tilde/291231/25 "2005-02-23T06:13:33Z")
As a distinctive symbol, the ñ is often used as something of a logo for the Spanish language; I once saw a website where Spanish was represented by ñ, French by ê, and English by wh. I’ve also seen a Spanish dictionary with the alphabet in front, with the ñ in a different colour. Oddly, at one point when Spain held the EU presidency, they used as their logo an e-tilde (the e presumably being for España), which not only is not a Spanish letter but also does not seem to be in any of the simpler character sets. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2005, 6:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-use-the-tilde/291231/26 "2005-02-23T06:29:22Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > Surprised nobody has mentioned its use in Linux (not sure if it is just bash or if it’s universal) - it represents the currently logged user’s home directory, so **cd /home/mangetout** is the same as **cd ~** It predates Linux. I’m pretty sure it goes back to the original Bourne shell, circa 1977. Anyway, bash predates Linux, too. It was developed as part of the GNU Project, which created a lot of Unix-compatible tools that significantly extended their proprietary counterparts. Bash was written in 1987. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2005, 6:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-use-the-tilde/291231/27 "2005-02-23T06:34:31Z")
> [@Derleth](#): > > It was developed as part of the GNU Project, which created a lot of Unix-compatible tools that significantly extended their proprietary counterparts. Or, “that had significant extensions _beyond_ their proprietary counterparts.” The GNU tools’ extensions are a barrier to writing portable scripts, BTW: The people coming up now expect all of the nice features of bash and gawk (GNU awk) and so on, so making their shell scripts work on Solaris or another proprietary Unix is hard. This problem is slowly going away as traditional Unixes die out in favor of Linux and the open-source BSDs. ---
**Author:** ![AskNott](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asknott/32/5790_2.png) [@AskNott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AskNott)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2005, 7:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-use-the-tilde/291231/28 "2005-02-23T07:58:27Z")
“You can talk about it ~ cows come home, but it won’t change anything.” “Rutherford B. Hayes beat Samuel J. ~n.” “Wait ~ sun shines, Nelly.” ---
**Author:** ![joazito](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/7feea3/32.png) [@joazito](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/joazito)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2005, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-use-the-tilde/291231/29 "2005-02-24T01:46:02Z")
Just so you know, on portuguese keyboards the ~ key must be followed by anouther one for it to appear. So ~+a = ã, ~+o = õ, to get it alone it’s ~+[SPACE]. That sucks for programs where the ~ key is supposed to do something (some editors use it to comment a bunch of code lines all at once, for example, and it just won’t work). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-use-the-tilde/291231.md?page=1)