I'm sure we could invent a history of the ~ for you, if that would help?

As for the | symbol, I crudely use it for seperating out related info in my event listings at work. Rightly or wrongly I think it looks sleek, occasionally it is good to sod the grammatical correctness.

I think the only purpose of most of those characters is to allow people to get creative with their ebay feedback and make lots of pretty sqiggles on the page.

Actually I think the character ~ is called a TILDE and there is some info about its history on wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilde. They say that "It was originally written over a letter as a mark of abbreviation, but has since acquired a number of other uses as a diacritic mark or a character in its own right, and there are a number of Unicode characters for these different roles. In the latter capacity (especially in lexicography), the tilde or swung dash (⁓ is used in dictionaries to indicate the omission of the entry word" which is essentially wot Emma said.

"Is it ever correct to use æ instead of ae?"

Yes! It is correctly used in words like archæology and mediæval, and in lots of borrowings from Latin, Greek (although of course you can often substitute ae or just e correctly, depending on the word). It is also important in Danish and Norwegian spelling and is a specific symbol in the phonetic alphabet.

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wiki didn't have a smiley in their entry in case you were wondering! Apparently on writewords a tilde followed by a closing bracket equals a wink!

Did you know you could do this on here? ♥

I know, small things....

I didn't, but I am awed by your perspicacity. As proof of the power of language to influence thought, I will have to go to the gym as writing on my dark novel has been derailed by an urgent need to find a way to work ¢¾ into a meaningful sentence.

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Dagnamit, ¢¾ or ♥ was supposed to be the <3 symbol. Curses, I have been outwitted again.

(Though, on the plus side, such disappointment has reopened a valuable seam of brooding resentment.)

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How come ¢¾ works with "Owner Edit" but not with the original post? Weird.

Maybe I'll write a mystery instead...

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Dag and double dag namit.

It only works when preceded by ¢¾ as in ♥ (or at least, I think that's what has happened).

I'm writing a teenage novel, so I reckon I can definitely get a few ♥s in there. I might even try for a ~ too, though. Somehow.

Cath

Oh, you're both so ¢¾ right now I can't stand it!

JB

Oh JB, you're just ¢À.

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Oh, I've been outwitted too! That wasn't supposed to look like that! ¢À ♣

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Yes, that's right: ♣

☺☻♠♣♥♦♪♫☼♀♂╒╓╔╕╖╗╘╙╚╛╜╝╞╟╠╡╢╣╤
Think I should do some work.

I did sod-all work today (after working my backside off for a long time before Xmas) and frankly, I don't care!! Bring on the symbols!