copied from here
~ “tilde” or “tweedle” or “squiggly line”. Also used as a “swung dash” and in mathematics with other signs to mean “approximately” and in logic sometimes used to mean “not”. See Tilde on wiki
``` “grave accent” or “stress mark”. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grave_accen… .
! “exclamation point” or “exclamation mark’. Used to end an emphatic sentence. Also often used in computer languages to mean “not” and in mathematics to indicate “factorial’. See Exclamation on wiki.
@ “at sign” or “commercial at sign”. See it on wiki.
# “number sign” or “pound sign’ or “octothorpe” or “hash mark”
$ “dollar sign”, for example $29.00 would be read as “twenty-nine dollars’
% “percent sign”, so 50% is “fifty per cent’’
^ “caret” or “up-arrow head” or “circumflex accent”. Often used on computers to indicate the following symbol(s) would be superscripted in normal typography, that is 5^23 is the same as 5²³. Sometimes called a “carrot” by the illiterate.
& “and sign” or “ampersand”. An abbreviation symbol for “and”.
* “asterisk” or “star”
( “opening parenthesis”
) “closing parenthesis”
_ “low line”, “underbar”, “underline”, “underscore”
- “hyphen-minus”, “hyphen”, “minus”: a typewriter symbol used for both hyphen and minus. Sometimes, when spaces appear on both sides of it, it represents a dash, but a dash is more often built from two hyphen-minuses. In normal typography for dashes there is an en-dash (–) and an em-dash (—) which are different characters.
+ “plus sign”
= “equal sign”
| “vertical line”, “vertical bar”, “pipe”
\ “backslash”
< “less than sign”
> “greater than sign”
, “comma”
. “period”, “full stop”, “decimal point”
? “question mark”
/ “slash”, “virgule”, also usually used on computers as a “division slash” or “solidus”, though in normal typography the division slash is more slanted. Misnamed “SOLIDUS” by Unicode.
" “quotation marks” or “straight quotation marks” or “typewriter quotation marks. Originally a typewriter substitute for “ (opening quotation marks), ” (closing quotation marks), ʺ (double prime used to mean “inches” and “seconds”), and〃(ditto mark).
' “apostrophe’’ or “single quotation mark” or “straight apostrophe” or “typewriter apostrophe” or “straight single quotation mark” or “typewriter single quotation mark”. Originally a typewriter substitute for ‘ (opening single quotation mark), ’ (closing single quotation mark or apostrophe), ′ (single prime used to mean “feet” in measurement and to mean “minutes”)
: “colon”, a punctuation mark
; “semi-colon”, a punctuation mark