To express a range of numbers, Korean (and likely other Asian languages) will use a tilde instead of a dash or hyphen. To me, that better expresses that we’re talking about an indeterminate value or a range. Especially when we use ~ for “about”, as in ~$20 for something that costs $17.99 before tax, for example.
Dining out costs like 20~40 dollars per person!
Whereas “20-40” looks too similar to a subtraction equation or a hyphenated word to me.
To express a range of numbers, Korean (and likely other Asian languages) will use a tilde instead of a dash or hyphen. To me, that better expresses that we’re talking about an indeterminate value or a range. Especially when we use ~ for “about”, as in ~$20 for something that costs $17.99 before tax, for example.
Whereas “20-40” looks too similar to a subtraction equation or a hyphenated word to me.
≈ is what my math classes use
In properly formatted text, you use en dash for ranges.
En dash: 20–40
Hyphen: 20-40
Some (most?) modern text editors will substitute two hyphens with an en dash, so you can easily generate them by typing
--.(I get your point though! Just wanted to point out that there are much nicer and more appropriate glyphs than the hyphen.)
En dash is very useful for
Dates (3–20–25)
Subtraction (although I think math script uses its own unique dash?) (7 – 1 = 6)
Value ranges ($20–40)
Then of course there’s the beautiful—and slightly different—em dash!
USA English also uses ~ before a number to signify “about” in informal contexts. “It costs ~$20”.
Chemistry has a weird one for this: “ca. 20 mL” means “about 20 mL” and I never found out why.
Circa?
It is circa, but I like to think it’s “chemist’s approximately”
Maybe, I usually only hear that in relation to time / maybe I’m not remembering it right, or maybe chemists apply it to amounts as well
Same, but it does mean ‘around’ or ‘approximately’, so would still work in this context.