LaTeX approx tilde: ~ vanishes, \textasciitilde sits too high, use $\sim$

Writing "~10 hrs" in LaTeX body text prints " 10 hrs" because ~ is a non-breaking space. \textasciitilde does print, but in Times-family fonts (e.g. the mcdowellcv resume class under lualatex) it renders as a tiny raised accent that readers miss on a PDF. $\sim$10 renders a proper centred tilde at text size. pdftotext shows "~" in all three cases, so verify with a rendered image (pdftoppm crop), not text extraction. If the client dislikes the symbol entirely, a range like 10-15 sidesteps it.