On Sun, 02 May 1999 23:01:15 -0400, TonyB <ben### [at] panamaphoenixnet> wrote:
>> You must have at least some light on all parts of a normal or it will not
>> show. Thought maybe the tilde 0.3 for the 'brilliance' was a negative
>> number, guess Margus uses a tilde the same way I do, short for
>> approximately.
>
>I didn't know that's what that thingy (~) was called. I've always called that


>(pronounce like the yn in Grand Canyon).

Odd... I learned that the squiggle used atop an n in Spanish is called a tilde.
WWWebster (http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary) agrees with me, for English, 
and Babelfish (http://babelfish.altavista.digital.com) doesn't translate it.
(It doesn't translate vi'rgula the other way, either.)  I had always called 
the symbol by itself (as used in C programming and web addresses) a tilde, too,
but always with some reservations.  WWWebster tells me that I need not have 
worried, as that is sense 2 of the definition.

The mark you posted, assuming I saw the same thing you saw (an a with a ' over 
it) is an acute accent.  The mark that goes the other way (i.e. `) is a grave 
accent.While I'm at it, the .. is called either a diaeresis or an umlaut, 
depending on usage.  All those marks, and others like the single dot, the bar, 
the circumflex, and the u-shaped-thingy that marks a short vowel, are called 
diacritics, or diacritical marks.

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