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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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