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[Hammurabi]

Today I learned ***** means water, from another thread:

When you're choosing where to embark to.  One of the windows shows what the top seven levels are made of, roughly.  Cliffs and such can change this.  It also shows if there's an aquifier on each of those levels.  For example:
Peat
Sand
Red sand *****
Granite *****
Marble
Granite
Slate
The ***** is the game's symbol for water.  Which would mean that the third and fourth levels, the red sand and the first granite, have aquifiers in them.

Why not just use water to mean water?  It takes up the same space (5 characters).  And it would be much more understandable.

[NW_Kohaku]

It means Aquifer, and the game tells you it means aquifer with its warning sign where it asks you to make sure you understand what that means before embarking, and the wiki (which is the actual instruction manual for the game, which you should not play the game without) says that it means an aquifer.

Why not ask for dwarves to be represented with the word "Dwarf", or walls to be represented with "Wall" written along all the walls?  It is perfectly valid to use symbols in games to represent different things, and aquifers are the sort of thing you'd have to look up once (and considering the impact they have on play, something you should look up and actually read the entire article on it in the wiki), and be able to understand it from then on.

If you aren't going to do the reading or pay attention to the built-in warnings, then there's only one remaining way to learn: Losing is Fun.  Just don't complain when people went out of their way to write wiki articles you couldn't be bothered to read that nobody warned you.

[Kanddak]

Besides which it is not "*****", it's blue double tildes, which are consistently used to represent water.

[SenorPez]

Besides which it is not "*****", it's blue double tildes, which are consistently used to represent water.

Thread over.

[Hammurabi]

My mistake if it is the double tilde symbol.  This makes some sense. 

[NW_Kohaku]

Sorry if I come off a little cross, but when you learn about something you don't understand, the first reaction should be to look it up on the wiki or ask someone on the forums about it.  Your first reaction should never be to go trotting to the suggestion forums to ask for something you don't completely understand to be changed.  (... I just had this argument...)

[Drawde]

Sorry about that.  In that thread, I meant it to be "* represents the game's symbol for water, which I can't remember right now".  I didn't phrase it correctly.

[Hammurabi]

Sorry if I come off a little cross, but when you learn about something you don't understand, the first reaction should be to look it up on the wiki or ask someone on the forums about it.  Your first reaction should never be to go trotting to the suggestion forums to ask for something you don't completely understand to be changed.  (... I just had this argument...)

I understand the dangers of an Aquafier; I've read the wiki.  I typically use the site finder to find an aquafier-free embark.  Sometimes I move around a bit if I see interesting geography.  If I get the warning about the aquafier, I'll look for another spot.  I just never correlated the  ≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈ as the indicator for an aquafier.  It could have been an underground river or pond as far as I knew.  The game uses the same symbol for various waters.

[Tehran]

You guys! There's such a thing as triple tildes!
≋≋≋≋≋≋
*glee!*

Other cool symbols:
asterism   ⁂
interrobang  ‽
reference mark    ※

[Richards]

He has a point though. It should be just called "Aquifer",

[Hyndis]

It uses the same symbol as water, is blue like water, and even looks like water flooding that layer of the ground.

[Kilo24]

It's a minor point, but still a valid one.

It's be better if it said ~Aquifer~ in blue, rather than ~~~~.  Not much better, but the OP's minor hiccup could be easily prevented through that with no drawbacks.

IMO, the more things like this that DF corrects, however minor, the better the UI will be.

If you have the flow amounts on, water won't look like the dual tildes.  There's not really a good reason to leave them off, other than you don't know they exist.  It still is true that most players will already know that dual ~'s = water before they change it, though (the only reason I can think of for having the flow amounts off by default.)

[Snes]

I have to say, I never made this connection.  The wiki's aquifer article doesn't mention this helpful little bit of information anywhere I can find.  And I've often been frustrated when it seems every spot on the map has an aquifer under it that I can only find by trial and error.  I vote 'yes' to improving the embark menu's readability.

[Neonivek]

Actually you know if a spot has an aquifier without ever looking at it.

You will notice that it isn't random. The kinds of places that have an aquifier will always have an aquifier.

If a place has Rock areas for example, that rock area won't have one.

[fanatic]

It's a minor point, but still a valid one.

It's be better if it said ~Aquifer~ in blue, rather than ~~~~.  Not much better, but the OP's minor hiccup could be easily prevented through that with no drawbacks.

True. OTOH isn't a half-of-the-screen warning message that pops up upon embarking on an aquifer enough?