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How to look up a symbol?
How does one insert a backslash or a tilde into LaTeX?

~ makes symbols after them 'phantoms'. I want just to write '~' in math mode and \~ doesn't work. How can I solve this problem?

(I want to write 'x is asymptotically normal distributed')

Community
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Karina Khusainova
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    Welcome to TeX.sx! Are you perhaps looking for \sim? – egreg Dec 10 '12 at 14:50
  • Also related answer for different choices http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/9363/how-does-one-insert-a-backslash-or-a-tilde-into-latex – percusse Dec 10 '12 at 14:55
  • @percusse That question is more oriented towards getting a tilde in text mode. – egreg Dec 10 '12 at 14:55
  • @egreg oh sorry, I didn't parse the text while reading :) – percusse Dec 10 '12 at 14:57
  • Scratch that close vote of mine, sorry. I made the question a little more distinct from the other one my focusing on math mode. – doncherry Dec 10 '12 at 15:03
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    The other famous tilde question could be made a bit more general and canonical by changing it to mean both text and math mode. Answers deal already with it in math mode. And the top answer could easily edited to reflect also math mode. I think this would be better than making near-duplicates distinct, so I think the dupe vote of @doncherry would be good. – Stefan Kottwitz Dec 10 '12 at 16:07
  • You can write as a text mode character, this way: $2014\text{\~}2015$. But if you want it as a mathematical symbol you can use \sim. – hkviktor Jan 13 '15 at 21:15

1 Answers1

136

There are various ways to do it.

Mathmode

\sim

Using package amssymb

\thicksim

Textmode

\textasciitilde

You can always check detexify

Thanos
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    Using \sim would appear to be the mathematically most correct way, since it produces TILDE OPERATOR (which is vertically positioned at operator level) as opposite to the Ascii TILDE (typically positioned higher). – Jukka K. Korpela Dec 10 '12 at 15:11
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    @JukkaK.Korpela: You are right. That's why I choose to mention it first. But I think that one has to have alternatives that best suit his/her needs! – Thanos Dec 10 '12 at 15:34
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    If you don't want the space after the tilde, you can wrap it with curly braces. For example: ${\sim} 10$ – DanHickstein Jan 03 '17 at 18:12
  • @DanHickstein Fantastic tip. Exactly what most of us will need! (And it is not obvious...) – Avatar Apr 25 '18 at 05:46