Newsgroups: alt.usage.english,sci.lang
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!honeysuckle!bb3.andrew.cmu.edu!nntp.sei.cmu.edu!news.cis.ohio-state.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!nntprelay.mathworks.com!news.mathworks.com!blanket.mitre.org!world!news
From: Freeland Blame <b@world.std.com>
Subject: Re: tilde or swung dash: ~ (was: Not another ... @ ...)
Message-ID: <wkyb6oh9pc.fsf_-_@world.std.com>
Sender: b@EAGLEHILL
Date: Wed, 30 Jul 1997 14:54:23 GMT
References: <33DC0B23.234B@aol.com> <7fzpr73843.fsf@phoenix.cs.hku.hk>
	<EE3JA2.Jry.0.staffin.dcs.ed.ac.uk@dcs.ed.ac.uk>
	<EE3K1F.Krq.0.staffin.dcs.ed.ac.uk@dcs.ed.ac.uk>
Nntp-Posting-Host: world.std.com
Organization: The World @ Software Tool & Die
X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.3/Emacs 19.34
Lines: 39

rwt@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Rainer Thonnes) writes:

> >Just say "cs.hku.hk/~sdlee on the web".
> 
> It just struck me.  In the above, how do you pronounce the '~' sign?
> I call it "twiddle".  Any other offers?

In the States in context of URLs it's usually called "tilde," and
"twiddle" is actually a lighthearted bit of cognoscenteism, a
faux-barbarianism (like splat and bang for * and !).

But in dictionaries, giving examples of usage, e.g., defining "Rainer"
as one who or that rains, "A cirrus ain't a ~", Merriam Webster and
Oxford Press call it a "swung dash", and I wonder if this might be a
defensible pronounciation for the symbol in URLs.

My thinking: I assume the use of ~ prepended to user names is an
allusion to the UNIX csh-and-successor "~user", which is a convenient
shorthand for "named user's home directory".

~user as a notation might have been chosen arbitrarily, a "what keys
are left" kind of consideration.  But who can say for sure, only the
innovator (someone named Joy, I think), perhaps there was some kind of
suggestion of "referring back to the head", at any rate, I can
retroactively imagine that, and so can you, no fee.

I believe ~ turned out to be an unfortunate choice as a notation
(blame the authors of HTTP servers), because it's not universally
available on keyboards or is for some reason disparaged by html
purists of the most zealous cast, and there's a seven percent
solution, an alternative to ~ in urls is %7e, so a url of the form:

	host://~user

can also be wrote like so:

	host://%7euser

freeland
