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Concept
Hyphen-minus
Summary
The hyphen-minus is the most commonly used type of hyphen, widely used in digital documents. In ASCII or on most keyboards it is the only character that resembles a minus sign or a dash so it is also used for these. The name "hyphen-minus" derives from the original ASCII standard, where it was called "hyphen (minus)". The character is referred to as a "hyphen", a "minus sign", or a "dash" according to the context where it is being used.
In early monospaced font typewriters and character encodings, a single key/code was almost always used for hyphen, minus, various dashes, and strikethrough, since they all have a roughly similar appearance. The current Unicode Standard specifies distinct characters for a number of different dashes, an unambiguous minus sign ("Unicode minus") at code point U+2212, and various types of hyphen including the unambiguous "Unicode hyphen" at U+2010 and the hyphen-minus at U+002D. When a hyphen is called for, the hyphen-minus is a common choice as it is well known, easy to enter on keyboards, and still the only form recognised by many data formats and computer languages. Though the Unicode Standard states that the U+2010 hyphen is "preferred" over the hyphen-minus, the standard itself uses the hyphen-minus as its hyphen character.
In most modern fonts, the hyphen-minus is either identical or very similar to the "Unicode hyphen".
In mathematical texts that include the plus sign, use of the hyphen-minus as a minus sign typically results in an unattractive appearance. Unlike the Unicode minus sign, the hyphen-minus is generally smaller and at a different height than the horizontal line in the plus sign; see the image.
Many word processors will word wrap at a hyphen-minus, but not after the "Unicode hyphen" sign.
This character is typed when a hyphen or a minus sign is wanted. Based on old typewriter conventions, it is common to use a pair to represent an em dash , and to put spaces around it to represent a spaced en dash . Some word processors automatically convert these to the correct dash.
Official source
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Related concepts (7)
Dash
The dash is a punctuation mark consisting of a long horizontal line. It is similar in appearance to the hyphen but is longer and sometimes higher from the baseline. The most common versions are the en dash , generally longer than the hyphen but shorter than the minus sign; the em dash , longer than either the en dash or the minus sign; and the horizontal bar , whose length varies across typefaces but tends to be between those of the en and em dashes.
Plus and minus signs
The plus sign and the minus sign are mathematical symbols used to represent the notions of positive and negative, respectively. In addition, represents the operation of addition, which results in a sum, while represents subtraction, resulting in a difference. Their use has been extended to many other meanings, more or less analogous. Plus and minus are Latin terms meaning "more" and "less", respectively. Though the signs now seem as familiar as the alphabet or the Hindu-Arabic numerals, they are not of great antiquity.
Hyphen
The hyphen is a punctuation mark used to join words and to separate syllables of a single word. The use of hyphens is called hyphenation. Son-in-law is an example of a hyphenated word. The hyphen is sometimes confused with dashes (en dash and em dash and others), which are longer, or with the minus sign , which is also longer and usually higher up to match the crossbar in the plus sign . As an orthographic concept, the hyphen is a single entity.