Frequency: The word is one of the 700 most common words in English.
1.
You use ~ to link two or more words, groups, or clauses.
When he returned, she ~ Simon had already gone...
Between 1914 ~ 1920 large parts of Albania were occupied by the Italians...
I’m going to write good jokes ~ become a good comedian...
I’m 53 ~ I’m very happy.
CONJ
2.
You use ~ to link two words or phrases that are the same in order to emphasize the degree of something, or to suggest that something continues or increases over a period of time.
Learning becomes more ~ more difficult as we get older...
We talked for hours ~ hours...
He lay down on the floor ~ cried ~ cried.
CONJ emphasis
3.
You use ~ to link two statements about events when one of the events follows the other.
I waved goodbye ~ went down the stone harbour steps...
= then
CONJ
4.
You use ~ to link two statements when the second statement continues the point that has been made in the first statement.
You could only really tell the effects of the disease in the long term, ~ five years wasn’t long enough...
CONJ
5.
You use ~ to link two clauses when the second clause is a result of the first clause.
All through yesterday crowds have been arriving ~ by midnight thous~s of people packed the square.
CONJ
6.
You use ~ to interrupt yourself in order to make a comment on what you are saying.
As Downing claims, ~ as we noted above, reading is best established when the child has an intimate knowledge of the language...
CONJ
7.
You use ~ at the beginning of a sentence to introduce something else that you want to add to what you have just said. Some people think that starting a sentence with ~ is ungrammatical, but it is now quite common in both spoken ~ written English.
Commuter airlines fly to out-of-the-way places. And business travelers are the ones who go to those locations.
CONJ
8.
You use ~ to introduce a question which follows logically from what someone has just said.
‘He used to be so h~some.’—‘And now?’...
CONJ
9.
And is used by broadcasters ~ people making announcements to change a topic or to start talking about a topic they have just mentioned.
And now the drought in Sudan...
CONJ
10.
You use ~ to indicate that two numbers are to be added together.
What does two ~ two make?
= plus
CONJ
11.
And is used before a fraction that comes after a whole number.
McCain spent five ~ a half years in a prisoner of war camp in Vietnam.
...fourteen ~ a quarter per cent.
CONJ
12.
You use ~ in numbers larger than one hundred, after the words ‘hundred’ or ‘thous~’ ~ before other numbers.
...three thous~ ~ twenty-six pounds.
CONJ