There’s probably a good chance you know most of the punctuation symbols on your keyboard, but there’s an even better chance there are three you don’t know. In fact, you might not even know their names, let alone how to use them.
Well, I’m going to explain what they are and how to use them.
Tilde (~)
The tilde (pronounced til-day or til-duh) is used by combining the shift key and the key to the left of the 1 key.
In the early days of the web, the tilde denoted a username or directory. It’s rarely seen in this context today.
As punctuation, use it before a number to indicate approximate amounts. For example ~40 apples means there are approximately 40 apples.
Grave accent (`)
This is the same key as the tilde, but you don’t need the Shift key. This isn’t a punctuation mark per se. It is mostly a functional key, used in programming or in a key combination to create an accented letter.
For example, if you hold down the Alt key on a Mac keyboard and type the grave accent key, you will receive a prompt that will then add an accent to an a, o, or e (i.e. à, ò, è).
Circumflex (^)
You type a circumflex by pressing Shift and 6. Some people will argue that this is a caret, but technically, a caret looks like a circumflex but rests on the baseline rather than above the x-height, which makes sense since a caret is usually used as a proofreading mark.
A circumflex is used in many languages as a way to stress vowels in words. Ironically, you don’t use the circumflex key to type accented characters. On a Mac, you would type Alt and i, then the letter you want accented.
As far as the circumflex key goes, that is mostly reserved for mathematics, to indicate an exponent. For example, 6^2 would be the same as 62.
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