math-modesymbols
Possible Duplicate:
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')
\textbackslash produces a backslash in text-mode. The math-mode $\sim$ and \texttildelow (from textcomp package) are options for a lower tilde (while \~{} and \textasciitilde produce a raised tilde in text-mode)
The Comprehensive LaTeX Symbol List is your friend. The correct link seems to keep changing, but if you have a complete TeX Live installation, the command texdoc symbols-a4 will display your local copy.
\textbackslash and \textasciitilde are found in several places in the document, but the LaTeX 2e ASCII Table (Table 529 as of this writing) and the following discussion are a convenient resource for all ASCII characters. In particular, the discussion notes that \~{} and \textasciitilde produce a raised tilde, whilst the math-mode $\sim$ and \texttildelow are options for a lower tilde; the latter is in the textcomp package, and looks best in fonts other than Computer Modern. If you are typesetting file names or urls, the document recommends the url package.
Remember to delimit TeX macros from surrounding text, e.g. bar\textasciitilde{}foo.
In comments you indicated that it is the height of the ~ that is your concern, perhaps one of these does what you want:
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
a\textasciitilde b\raisebox{-1ex}{\textasciitilde}c\raisebox{-1.2ex}{\textasciitilde}d\raisebox{-2ex}{\textasciitilde}e
\end{document}
Best Answer
There are various ways to do it.
Mathmode
Using package
amssymbTextmode
You can always check detexify