How to type tilde (~)
Also called squiggly line, swung dash, approximately sign.
Hold Shift with your right little finger and press the key above Tab, to the left of 1, with your left little finger. Without Shift the same key gives a backtick.
Which finger types ~
- Finger
- Left pinky
- Resting position
- A on the home row
- Shift
- Required, held by the other hand
- Hand
- left
No website can detect which finger you actually used — a browser reports the character, not the hand that produced it. The finger above is the one the standard touch typing layout assigns, and it is the one the lessons here train.
What ~ is used for
- Stands for your home folder on Mac and Linux, so ~/Documents is your own Documents folder.
- Means “approximately”, as in ~50 people.
- Marks a destructor in C++ and a version range in package files.
- Strikes text through in some Markdown flavours, written doubled.
Where it comes from
It began as a scribe's shorthand: medieval copyists saved expensive parchment by dropping an n or m and drawing a small wavy line above the previous letter to show something was missing. Spanish kept it as a letter of its own in ñ.
The mistake people make
Pressing it without Shift and getting a backtick. The two look similar at small sizes and sit on the same key, and in a terminal or a Markdown file they do entirely different things — a backtick where a tilde belongs will usually fail silently.
If the key is missing or gives the wrong character
- Windows: hold Alt and type 126 on the numeric keypad.
- Mac: Option+N then space produces a standalone tilde accent.
Practise it properly
Knowing which finger owns a key is not the same as using it without thinking. The Typometer course blocks on the wrong key and names the finger for every one, so the habit forms rather than the knowledge.
Other keys
Related guides
Free, and no account needed.
- Start at level 1: the home rowFind F and J without looking, one key at a time.
- How to learn touch typingWhat actually works, what to ignore, and how long it takes.
- The full typing course415 levels from the home row to code and professional documents.
- Untimed typing practicePractise without a clock and focus on the keys you keep missing.