What does symbol ~ do in Latex?

Question

I noticed this symbol in an example. Including or excluding this from the source doesn't change anything. However, if I include \~, it puts a ~ on the first letter of the next word. So, what could be purpose of including ~ in the code? Also, how do I print the ~ only in my document?

Also please see How does one insert a backslash or a tilde (~) into LaTeX? — cgnieder, May 17 '15 at 11:37
No. LaTeX will happily break a line between one two but it won't between one~two. The latter will stay in the same line together. — cgnieder, May 17 '15 at 11:47
How should LaTeX spaces should be non-breaking by default if the most praised feature of (La)TeX ist the line-breaking and hyphenation algorithm? — MaxNoe, May 17 '15 at 11:58
See also Why should I put a ~ before \ref or \cite? and Good practise on spacing for typical use cases. — Christian Lindig, May 17 '15 at 19:26

score 13 · Accepted Answer · edited Aug 16 '22 at 18:58

As stated in the comments, ~ inserts a non-breaking space. This means that you tell the typesetting algorithm that it should not insert a linebreak here. This is useful when making references. For example, if you write

according to the Pythagorean theorem there is a lot to be learned 
form a triangle. You might see in equation \eqref{eq:1} there is
some need for

is typeset as

enter image description here

however,

according to the Pythagorean theorem there is a lot to be learned
form a triangle. You might see in equation~\eqref{eq:1} there is
some need for

will ensure that equation and (1) stay on the same line.

enter image description here

What does symbol ~ do in Latex?

1 Answers1