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0042 <title>Reserved characters (LaTeX2e unofficial reference manual (November 2018))</title>
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0113 <a name="Reserved-characters"></a>
0114 <div class="header">
0115 <p>
0116 Next: <a href="Upper-and-lower-case.html#Upper-and-lower-case" accesskey="n" rel="next">Upper and lower case</a>, Up: <a href="Special-insertions.html#Special-insertions" accesskey="u" rel="up">Special insertions</a> &nbsp; [<a href="index.html#SEC_Contents" title="Table of contents" rel="contents">Contents</a>][<a href="IndexDocument.html#Index" title="Index" rel="index">Index</a>]</p>
0117 </div>
0118 <hr>
0119 <a name="Reserved-characters-1"></a>
0120 <h3 class="section">23.1 Reserved characters</h3>
0121 
0122 <a name="index-reserved-characters"></a>
0123 <a name="index-characters_002c-reserved"></a>
0124 <a name="index-special-characters"></a>
0125 <a name="index-characters_002c-special"></a>
0126 <p>LaTeX sets aside the following characters for special purposes. For
0127 example, the percent sign&nbsp;<code>%</code> is for comments.  They are
0128 called <em>reserved characters</em> or <em>special characters</em>.
0129 </p>
0130 <div class="example">
0131 <pre class="example"># $ % &amp; { } _ ~ ^ \ 
0132 </pre></div>
0133 
0134 <a name="index-_005c_0023"></a>
0135 <a name="index-_005c_0024"></a>
0136 <a name="index-_005c_0025"></a>
0137 <a name="index-_005c_0026"></a>
0138 <a name="index-_005c_005f"></a>
0139 <a name="index-_005c_007b"></a>
0140 <a name="index-_005c_007d"></a>
0141 <p>If you want a reserved character to be printed as itself, in the text
0142 body font, for all but the final three characters in that list simply
0143 put a backslash&nbsp;<code>\</code> in front of the character.  Thus,
0144 typing <code>\$1.23</code> will produce&nbsp;<code>$1.23</code> in your output.
0145 </p>
0146 <a name="index-_005c_007e"></a>
0147 <a name="index-_005c_005e"></a>
0148 <a name="index-_005ctextbackslash"></a>
0149 <p>As to the last three characters, to get a tilde in the text body font
0150 use <code>\~{}</code> (omitting the curly braces would result in the next
0151 character receiving a tilde accent).  Similarly, to get a get a text
0152 body font circumflex use <code>\^{}</code>.  To get a backslash in the font
0153 of the text body, enter <code>\textbackslash{}</code>.
0154 </p>
0155 <p>To produce the reserved characters in a typewriter font use
0156 <code>\verb!!</code> as below (the double backslash&nbsp;<code>\\</code> is only
0157 there to split the lines).
0158 </p>
0159 <div class="example">
0160 <pre class="example">\begin{center}
0161   \# \$ \% \&amp; \{ \} \_ \~{} \^{} \textbackslash \\
0162   \verb!# $ % &amp; { } _ ~ ^ \!
0163 \end{center}
0164 </pre></div>
0165 
0166 
0167 
0168 
0169 <hr/><div class='referenceinfo'> <a href='https://latexref.xyz/'> <i>Unofficial LaTeX2e reference manual</i></a></div>
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