Reserved characters (LaTeX2e unofficial reference manual (November 2018))

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### 23.1 Reserved characters

LaTeX sets aside the following characters for special purposes. For example, the percent sign `%` is for comments. They are called reserved characters or special characters.

    # $ % & { } _ ~ ^ \

If you want a reserved character to be printed as itself, in the text body font, for all but the final three characters in that list simply put a backslash `\` in front of the character. Thus, typing `\$1.23` will produce `$1.23` in your output.

As to the last three characters, to get a tilde in the text body font use `\~{}` (omitting the curly braces would result in the next character receiving a tilde accent). Similarly, to get a get a text body font circumflex use `\^{}`. To get a backslash in the font of the text body, enter `\textbackslash{}`.

To produce the reserved characters in a typewriter font use `\verb!!` as below (the double backslash `\\` is only there to split the lines).

    \begin{center}
      \# \$ \% \& \{ \} \_ \~{} \^{} \textbackslash \\
      \verb!# $ % & { } _ ~ ^ \!
    \end{center}

Unofficial LaTeX2e reference manual