Specially reserved symbols

In the sequel we will see that the the ten characters

0.1# $ % & ~ _ ^ \ { }

are reserved for special use. Indeed, we have seen already that \ and ~ are non-printing characters that perform special services (and we'll have a lot more to say about the use of \).

But what if we need one of these special symbols to appear in our document? The answer for seven of the symbols is to precede them by a \ character, so forming another control symbol (remember that \ followed by a space was also a control symbol).

0.1

It is not 100\% straightforward to typeset the
characters \$ \& \% \_ \{ \}, but given the
enormous convenience of the use they are normally
reserved for this is a small price to pay.
produces

0.10.8It is not 100% straightforward to typeset the characters $ & % _ { }, but given the enormous convenience of the use they are normally reserved for this is a small price to pay.