-

- - The term - Hyphen, Minus Sign, Dash,. -

punctuation mark. It is used both to join words and to separate syllables. It is often confused with the dashes ( –, —, -- ), which are longer and have different functions, and with the minus sign ( - ) which is also longer. The use of hyphens is called hyphenation.
Contents

Customs of usage in English Hyphens are most commonly used to break single words into parts, or to join ordinarily separate words into single words.

A definitive collection of hyphenation rules does not exist. Therefore, the writer or editor should consult a manual of style or dictionary of his or her preference, preferably for the country in which he or she is writing. The rules of style that apply to dashes and hyphens have evolved to support ease of reading in complex constructions; editors often accept deviations from them that will support, rather than hinder, ease of reading. Spaces should not be placed between a hyphen and either of the words it connects except when using a suspended hyphen (e.g. nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers—see below).

The use of the hyphen in compound nouns and verbs has, in general, been steadily declining. Compounds that might once have been hyphenated are increasingly left with spaces or are combined into one word. The sixth edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary removed the hyphens from 16,000 entries, such as fig-leaf (now fig leaf), pot-belly (now pot belly) and pigeon-hole (now pigeonhole). In other countries hyphens are dropped in favor of connecting the two-word compounds. Use of the hyphen is particularly avoided by those concerned with visual cleanliness, for example writers of advertising copy, packaging labels etc.

However, a significant number of compounds are still routinely hyphenated (e.g. breast-feed, add-on (noun), get-together, Hewlett-Packard, merry-go-round). Hyphenation remains the norm in certain compound modifier constructions and, amongst some authors, with certain prefixes (see below). Hyphenation is also routinely used to avoid unsightly spacing in justified texts (for example, in newspaper columns).

Separating

Justification and line-wrapping

To allow more efficient usage of paper, more regular appearance of right-side margins without requiring spacing adjustments, and to eliminate the need to erase hand-written long words begun near the end of a line that do not fit, words may be divided at the nearest breakpoint between syllables and a hyphen inserted to indicate that the letters form a word fragment, not a word. For example:
Without hyphenation With hyphenation

We, therefore, the
representatives of the United
States of America...

We, therefore, the represen-
tatives of the United States
of America...

The details of doing this properly are complex and language-dependent and can interact with other orthographic and typesetting practices: see justification and hyphenation algorithm. Such hyphenation algorithms, when employed in concert with dictionaries, are sufficient for all but the most formal texts.

Prefixes and suffixes

In general, prefixes and suffixes are affixed to another word. Certain prefixes (co-, pre-, mid-, de-, non-, anti-, etc.) are often improperly hyphenated, though usage varies between American and British English. British English tends towards hyphenation (pre-school) whereas American English tends towards omission of the hyphen (preschool). A hyphen is mandatory when a prefix is applied to a proper (capitalized) adjective (un-American, de-Stalinisation).

In British English, hyphens may be employed where readers would otherwise be tempted into a mispronunciation (e.g. co-worker is so punctuated partly to prevent the reader's eye being caught automatically by the word cow). The AP Stylebook provides further information on the use of "co-" as a prefix.

Hyphens may be used, in association with prefixes, suffixes or otherwise, when repeated vowels or consonants are pronounced separately rather than being silent or merged in a diphthong. For example: shell-like, anti-intellectual. In the vowel-vowel case, some English authorities use a diaeresis (as in coöperation, rather than co-operation or cooperation), but this style is now rare.

Some prefixed words are hyphenated to distinguish them from other words that would otherwise be homographs, such as recreation (fun or sport) and re-creation (the act of creating again), or predate (what a predator does) and pre-date (to be of an earlier calendar date).

Syllabification and spelling

Hyphens are occasionally used to denote syllabification, as in syl-lab-i-fi-ca-tion. Most American dictionaries use an interpunct, sometimes called a "middle dot" or "hyphenation point", for this purpose, as in syl·lab·i·fi·ca·tion. Similarly, hyphens may be used to imply the spelling of a word, such as "W-O-R-D spells word".

Joining

Compound modifiers

Compound modifiers are groups of two or more words that jointly modify the meaning of another word. When a compound modifier, other than a noun–noun or adverb–adjective combination, appears before a term, the compound modifier is generally hyphenated to prevent any possible misunderstanding, such as in American-football player or real-world example. Without the hyphen, there is potential confusion about whether American applies to football or player, or whether the author might perhaps be referring to a "world example" that is "real". Compound modifiers can extend to three or more words, as in ice-cream-flavored candy, and can be adverbial as well as adjectival (spine-tinglingly frightening).

When the same combination of words follows the term it applies to, hyphens may or may not be required, depending on how "tightly bound" the compound is felt to be. Noun–adjective compounds are likely to require a hyphen. For example: American-football player / a player of American football and real-world example / an example from the real world, but time-sensitive documents / the documents are time-sensitive and left-handed catch / he took the catch left-handed.

Hyphens are not normally used in noun–noun compound modifiers, when no confusion is possible; for example: government standards organization and department store manager.

Hyphens should not normally be used in adverb–adjective modifiers such as wholly owned subsidiary and quickly moving vehicle (because the adverbs clearly modify the adjectives; "quickly" does not apply to "vehicle" as "quickly vehicle" would be meaningless). However, if the adverb can also function as an adjective, then a hyphen may be required for clarity. For example, the phrase more-important reasons ("reasons that are more important") is distinguished from more important reasons ("additional important reasons"), where more is an adjective. A mass-noun example is the following: more-beautiful scenery as distinct from more beautiful scenery. Other examples are well-received speech and hard-won fight.

Hyphens are used to connect numbers and words in forming adjectival phrases (particularly with weights and measures), whether numerals or written out, as in 28-year-old woman (cf. twenty-eight-year-old woman) or 320-foot wingspan. The SI recommends against this practice when using abbreviated metric units. The same usually holds for abbreviated time units. Hyphens are also used in spelled-out fractions as adjectives (but not as nouns), such as two-thirds majority and one-eighth portion.

Where an adjective–noun compound would be plural standing alone, it usually becomes singular and hyphenated when modifying another noun. For example, four days becomes four-day week.

An en dash ( – ) sometimes replaces the hyphen in hyphenated compounds if either of its constituent parts is already hyphenated or contains a space (e.g. high-priority–high-pressure tasks (tasks which are both high-priority and high-pressure). Hyphens are often used where en dashes are more properly used, in ranges (pp. 312–14), relationships (blood–brain barrier) and to convey the sense of to (Boston–Washington race).

Other compounds

Connecting hyphens are used in a large number of miscellaneous compounds, other than modifiers, such as in lily-of-the-valley, cock-a-hoop, clever-clever, tittle-tattle and orang-utan. Usage is often dictated by convention rather than fixed rules, and hyphenation styles may vary between authors; for example, orang-utan is also written as orangutan or orang utan, and lily-of-the-valley may or may not be hyphenated.

Two-word names of numbers less than one hundred are hyphenated. For instance, the number 23 should be written twenty-three, and 123 should be written one hundred and twenty-three. (The and is omitted in American English.)

Some married couples compose a new surname (sometimes referred to as a double-barrelled name) for their new family by combining their two surnames with a hyphen. Jane Doe and John Smith might become Jane and John Smith-Doe, or Doe-Smith, for instance. In some countries, however, only the woman hyphenates her birth surname, appending her husband's surname.

Suspended hyphens

A suspended hyphen (also referred to as a "hanging hyphen" or "dangling hyphen") may be used when a single base word is used with separate, consecutive, hyphenated words which are connected by "and", "or", or "to". For example, nineteenth-century and twentieth-century may be written as nineteenth- and twentieth-century. This usage is derived from that of German, which uses a dangling hyphen when the second word is unhyphenated, e.g., Die Lumpen- und Arbeiterproletariaten.

Other uses

A hyphen may be used to connect groups of numbers, such as in dates (see below), telephone numbers or sports scores.

The hyphen is sometimes used to hide letters in words, as in G-d.

Examples of usage

Some strong examples of semantic changes caused by the placement of hyphens:

* disease-causing poor nutrition, meaning poor nutrition that causes disease
* disease causing poor nutrition, meaning a disease that causes poor nutrition

* a man-eating shark is a shark that eats humans
* a man eating shark is a man who is eating shark meat

* a blue green sea is a contradiction
* a blue-green sea is a sea whose colour is somewhere between blue and green

Additional examples of proper use:

* text-only document or the document is text-only
* Detroit-based organization or the organization is Detroit-based
* state-of-the-art product or the product is state-of-the-art (but The state of the art is very advanced. with no hyphen)
* board-certified strategy or the strategy is board-certified
* thought-provoking argument or the argument is thought-provoking
* time-sensitive error or the error is time-sensitive
* case-sensitive password or the password is case-sensitive
* government-issued photo ID or the photo ID is government-issued (but …is issued by the government with no hyphen.)
* light-gathering surface or the surface is light-gathering
* award-winning novel or the novel is award-winning (but, more likely, …won an award with no hyphen)
* web-based encyclopedia or the encyclopedia is web-based
* fun-loving person or the person is fun-loving
* how to wire-transfer funds
* how to tax-plan
* advertising-supported service or service is advertising-supported (but, better, …is supported by advertising with no hyphen.)
* Rudolph Giuliani is an Italian-American (but see hyphenated American)
* list of China-related topics …list of topics is China-related (but …related to China with no hyphen)
* out-of-body experience
* near-death experience
* in surnames, for example Dominique Strauss-Kahn

Note, though, that many authoritative sources, such as the Chicago Manual of Style, recommend writing commonplace compounds open (i.e., without hyphen) when they appear after the noun they modify and when they are used adverbially. Thus

* She always wears out-of-date clothes.

but

* Her wardrobe is out of date.

Similarly, for the adverbial use compare

* The hand-to-hand combat was frightful.

and

* They fought hand to hand in repulsing the attack.

Origin and history of the hyphen
This section does not cite any references or sources. (June 2006)
Please improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.

The likely first use of the hyphen—and its origination—ought to be credited to Johannes Gutenberg of Mainz, Germany circa 1455 with the publication of his 42-line Bible. Examination of an original copy on vellum (Hubay index #35) in the U. S. Library of Congress shows that Gutenberg's movable type was set justified in a uniform style, 42 equal lines per page.

Prior to Gutenberg setting the first lines printed in the Western world with movable type, there was no need for hyphens or the justification of lines to equal length. The Gutenberg printing press required words made up of individual letters of type to be held in place by a surrounding non-printing rigid frame. Gutenberg solved the problem of making each line the same length to fit the frame by inserting a hyphen as the last element at the right side margin. This interrupted the letters in the last word, requiring the remaining letters be carried over to the start of the line below. His hyphen appears throughout the Bible as a short, double line inclined to the right at a 60-degree angle.

In medieval times and the early days of printing, the predecessor of the comma was a slash. As the hyphen ought not to be confused with this, a double-slash was used, this resembling an equals sign tilted like a slash. Writing forms changed with time, and included the full development of the comma, so the hyphen could become one horizontal stroke.

However, publishers of dictionaries liked that a tilted symbol would give them a little extra room in their books. Those dictionaries based on the second edition of the Merriam-Webster dictionary used one small, slightly tilted slash for a hyphen which they added at the end of a line where they broke the word, but used a double-slash, much like the very old symbol, to indicate a hyphen that was actually a part of the phrase but just happened to fall at the end of the line. This double-slash would be used in hyphenated phrases in the middle of the text as well, so that there would be no confusion.

Hyphens in computing

In the ASCII character encoding, the hyphen was encoded as character 45. Technically, this character is called the hyphen-minus, as it is also used as the minus sign and for dashes. In Unicode, this same character is encoded as U+002D ( - ) so that Unicode remains compatible with ASCII. However, Unicode also encodes the hyphen and minus separately, as U+2010 ( - ) and U+2212 ( - ), respectively, along with a series of dashes. Use of the hyphen-minus character is discouraged where possible, in favour of the specific hyphen character. Nevertheless, since the Unicode hyphen is awkward to enter on normal keyboards, the hyphen-minus character remains extremely common. Hyphens are often used instead of dashes in situations where proper dash characters are unavailable (such as ASCII-only text) or difficult to enter, or when the writer is unaware of the difference. Some writers use two hyphens (--) to represent a dash in ASCII text.

When flowing text, it is sometimes preferable to break a word in half so that it continues on another line rather than moving the entire word to the next line. Since it is difficult for a computer program to automatically make good decisions on when to hyphenate a word the concept of a soft hyphen was introduced to allow manual specification of a place where a hyphenated break was allowed without forcing a line break in an inconvenient place if the text was later reflowed. In contrast, a hyphen that is always displayed and printed is called a hard hyphen (though some use this term to refer to a non-breaking hyphen; see below). Soft hyphens are most useful when the width is known but future editability is desired, as few would have the patience to put them in at every place they believed a hyphenated split was acceptable (as would be needed for their meaningful use on a medium like the Web, however CSS3 introduces language-specific hyphenation dictionaries which solves this).

When flowing text, a system may consider the soft hyphen to be a point at which a word may be broken, and display a hyphen at the end of the broken line; if the line is not broken at that point the hyphen is not displayed. In most parts of ISO-8859 the soft hyphen is at position 0xAD, and since the first 256 positions in Unicode are taken from ISO-8859-1, it has a Unicode codepoint of U+00AD. In HTML, the soft hyphen is encoded as the character entity ''.

Most text systems consider a hyphen to be a word boundary and a valid point at which to break a line when flowing text. However, this is not always desirable behavior, especially when it could lead to ambiguity (such as in the examples given before, where recreation and re-creation would be indistinguishable). For this purpose, Unicode also encodes a non-breaking hyphen as U+2011 ( - ). This character looks identical to the regular hyphen, but is not treated as a word boundary.

The ASCII hyphen-minus character is also often used when specifying parameters to programs in a command line interface. The character is usually followed by one or more letters that indicate specific actions. Typically it is called a dash in this context. This is used in many different operating systems, particularly Unix and Unix-like systems. DOS and Microsoft Windows also sometimes make use of the hyphen, although the use of a forward slash (/) is more prevalent there. A parameter by itself that is only a single hyphen without any letters usually means that a program is supposed to handle data coming from the standard input or send data to the standard output. Two hyphen-minus characters ( -- ) are used on some programs to specify "long options" where more descriptive action names are used. This is a common feature of GNU software.

International Standard dates

Main article: Date and time notation by country

Continental Europeans use the hyphen to delineate parts within a written date. Germans and Slavs also used Roman numerals for the month; 14-VII-1789, for example, is one way of writing the first Bastille Day, though this usage is rapidly falling out of favour. Plaques on the wall of the Moscow Kremlin are written this way. Usage of hyphens, as opposed to the slashes used in the English language, is specified for international standards.

International standard ISO 8601, which was accepted as European Standard EN 28601 and incorporated into various typographic style guides (e.g., DIN 5008 in Germany), brought about a new standard using the hyphen. Now all official European governmental documents use this. These norms prescribe writing dates using hyphens: 1789-07-14 is the new way of writing the first Bastille Day.

This method has gained influence within North America, as most common computer filesystems make the use of slashes difficult or impossible. Windows uses both \ and / as the directory separator, and / is also used to introduce and separate switches to shell commands. Unix-like systems use / as a directory separator and, while \ is legal in filenames, it is awkward to use as the shell uses it as an escape character. Unix also uses a space followed by a hyphen to introduce switches. The non-year form is also identical apart from the separator used to the standard American representation.

The ISO date format sorts correctly using a default collation, which can be useful in many computing situations including for filenames, so many computer systems and IT technicians have switched to this method. The government of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, for example, has switched to this method.

Minus sign

The minus sign has two uses in mathematics:

1. The subtraction operator: A binary operator to indicate the operation of subtraction, as in 5 - 3 = 2. Subtraction is the inverse of addition.
2. A unary operator that acts as an instruction to replace the operand by its negative (or "opposite"). When applied to a positive number, unary minus creates a negative number. For example, -5 is the negative of 5, and -10.4 is the negative of 10.4. When applied to a negative number unary minus creates a positive number (the opposite of a negative is a positive). For example, if x is 3, then -x is -3, but if x is -3, then -x is 3. Similarly, -(-2) is equal to 2. When applied to zero the result is zero (-0 = 0).

Technically, only the first use should be read minus, where as the number -5 should be read "negative 5" and the symbol -x should be read "the opposite of x". However, informally, "minus 5" and "minus x" are often heard.

In some contexts, different glyphs are used for these meanings; e.g., the unary operator may be raised (as in 2 – 5 = -3), but this usage is rare.

In grading systems (such as examination marks), the minus sign indicates a grade one level lower; for example, B- ("B minus") is one grade lower than B. Sometimes this is extended to two minus signs; for example B-- is one grade lower than B-.

In most programming languages, subtraction and negation are indicated with the ASCII hyphen-minus character -. In C and some other computer programming languages, two hyphen-minus signs indicate the decrement operator; for example, x-- means "decrement the value of x by one".

mark. It is longer than a hyphen and is used differently.

Common dashes

There are several forms of dash, of which the most common are:
glyph Unicode[1] HTML[2] HTML/XML[3] TeX
hyphen - U+2010 (8208) none ‐ or ‐ -
figure dash - U+2012 (8210) none ‒ or ‒ none
en dash – U+2013 (8211) – – or – --
em dash — U+2014 (8212) — — or — ---
horizontal bar -- U+2015 (8213) none ― or ―
swung dash \sim U+2053 (8275) none ⁓ or ⁓

Hyphen

The hyphen (-) is used both to join words and to separate syllables. Strictly speaking, the hyphen is not a dash; thus, careful typesetting (including with modern computer applications, such as word processors and HTML) relies on the following proper dashes instead.

Figure dash

The figure dash (-) is so named because it is the same width as a digit, at least in typefaces with digits of equal width.

The figure dash is used when a dash must be used within numbers, for example with telephone numbers: 867-5309. This does not indicate a range (en dash is used for that), or function as the minus sign (which has its own glyph).

The figure dash is often unavailable; in this case, one may use a hyphen-minus instead. In Unicode, the figure dash is U+2012 (decimal 8210). HTML authors must use the numeric forms ‒ or ‒ to type it unless the file is in Unicode; there is no equivalent character entity. In TeX, the standard fonts have no figure dash; however, the digits normally all have the same width as the en dash, so an en dash can be substituted in TeX.

En dash

The en dash, or n dash, n-rule, etc., (–) is roughly the width of the letter n. It is half the size of an em dash.

The en dash is used in ranges, such as 6–10 years, read as "six to ten years".

Ranges of values

The en dash is commonly used to indicate a closed range (a range with clearly defined and non-infinite upper and lower boundaries) of values, such as those between dates, times, or numbers.

Some examples of this usage:

* June–July 1967
* 1:00–2:00 p.m.
* For ages 3–5
* pp. 38–55
* President Jimmy Carter (1977–1981)

The Guide for the Use of the International System of Units (SI) recommends that the word to be used instead of an en dash when a number range might be misconstrued as subtraction, such as a range of units. For example, "a voltage of 50 V to 100 V" rather than "a voltage of 50 – 100 V".

It is also considered inappropriate to use the en dash in place of the words to and and in phrases that follow the forms from...to... and between...and....

[edit] Relationships and connections

The en dash can also be used to contrast values, or illustrate a relationship between two things.

Some examples of this usage:

* Notre Dame beat Miami 31–30.
* New York–London flight (though some sources say that New York to London flight is more appropriate because New York is a single name composed of two valid words; with a dash the phrase is ambiguous and could mean either Flight from New York to London or New flight from York to London
* Mother–daughter relationship
* The Supreme Court voted 5–4 to uphold the decision.
* The McCain–Feingold bill
* A C–C single bond

A "simple" compound used as an adjective is written with a hyphen; at least one authority considers name pairs, as in the Taft-Hartley Act to be "simple", while most consider an en dash appropriate there[citation needed] to represent the parallel relationship, as in the McCain–Feingold bill or Bose–Einstein statistics.

Note that The Chicago Manual of Style limits the use of the en dash to two main purposes: to indicate ranges of time, money, or other amounts (or in certain other cases where it replaces the word to); and in place of a hyphen in a compound adjective when one of the elements of the adjective is an open compound or when one of the elements is already hyphenated. That is, the Chicago Manual of Style rules specify en dash in these:

* Notre Dame beat Miami 31–30.
* New York–London flight.
* The Supreme Court voted 5–4 to uphold the decision.

but hyphens in these:

* Mother-daughter relationship
* The McCain-Feingold bill
* A C-C single bond
* Taft-Hartley Act
* Bose-Einstein statistics

Compound adjectives

The en dash can be used instead of a hyphen in compound adjectives in which one part consists of two words or a hyphenated word:[5][6]

* The non–San Francisco part of the world
* The post–MS-DOS era
* High-priority–high-pressure tasks (tasks which are both high-priority and high-pressure).

Usage guidelines

The en dash is used instead of a hyphen in compound adjectives for which neither part of the adjective modifies the other. That is, when each is modifying the noun. This is common in science, when names compose an adjective as in Bose–Einstein condensate. Compare this with "award-winning novel" in which "award" modifies "winning" and together they modify "novel". Contrast "Franco-Prussian War", "Anglo-Saxon", etc., in which the first element does not strictly modify the second, but a hyphen is still normally used. The Chicago Manual of Style recognizes but does not mandate this usage and uses a hyphen in Bose-Einstein condensate.[8]

En dashes that are used instead of hyphens to connect words normally do not have spaces around them. An exception is when excluding them may cause confusion or odd look (e.g., 12 June – 3 July; contrast 12 June–3 July). However, when an actual en dash is unavailable, one may use a hyphen-minus with a single space on each side (" - ").

Parenthetic and other uses at the sentence level

Like em dashes, en dashes can be used instead of colons, or pairs of commas that mark off a nested clause or phrase. They can also be used around parenthetical expressions – such as this one – in place of the em dashes preferred by some publishers, particularly where short columns are used, since em dashes can look awkward at the end of a line. See En dash versus em dash, below. In these situations, en dashes must have a single space on each side.

Electronic usage

In Unicode, the en dash is U+2013 (decimal 8211). In HTML, one may use the numeric forms – or –; there is also an HTML entity –. In TeX, the en dash may normally (depending on the font) be input as a double hyphen-minus (--). On a computer running the Mac OS X operating system, most keyboard layouts map an en dash to Option-hyphen. On Microsoft Windows, an en dash may be entered as Alt+0150, where the digits are typed on the numeric keypad while holding the Alt key down.

The en dash is sometimes used as a substitute for the minus sign, when the minus sign character is not available, since the en dash is usually the same width as a plus sign. For example, the original 8-bit Macintosh character set had an en dash, useful for minus sign, years before Unicode with a dedicated minus sign was available. The hyphen-minus is usually too narrow to make a typographically acceptable minus sign. The en dash cannot be used in programming languages for a minus, however, since the syntax usually requires a hyphen-minus; since programming languages are usually set in a fixed-pitch (monospaced) font face, the hyphen-minus looks acceptable there.

Em dash

The em dash, or m dash, m-rule, etc., (—), indicates a parenthetical thought—like this one—or some similar interpolation. Its name derives from its defined width of one em (originally the width of the letter m), which is the length, expressed in points, by which font sizes are typically specified. Thus in 9-point type, an em is 9 points wide, while the em of 24-point type is 24 points wide, and so on. (By comparison, the en dash, with its 1-en width, is 1/2 em wide in any font.)

The em dash is used in much the way a colon or set of parentheses is used: it can show an abrupt change in thought or be used where a full stop (or "period") is too strong and a comma too weak. Em dashes are sometimes used in lists or definitions, but that is a style guide issue; a colon is often recommended for use instead.

According to most American sources (e.g., The Chicago Manual of Style) and to some British sources (e.g., The Oxford Guide to Style), an em dash should always be set closed (not surrounded by spaces). But the practice in many parts of the English-speaking world, also the style recommended by The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage, sets it open (separates it from its surrounding words by using spaces or hair spaces (U+200A)) when it is being used parenthetically. Some writers, finding the em dash unappealingly long, prefer to use an open-set en dash. This "space, en dash, space" sequence is also the predominant style in German and French typography. See En dash versus em dash below.

Monospaced fonts (such as Courier) that mimic the look of a typewriter have the same width for all characters. Some of these fonts have em and en dashes which more or less fill the monospaced width they have available. For example, "- – — -" will show as a hyphen, en dash, em dash, and minus in a monospace font. Typewriters often only have a single hyphen glyph, so it is common to use two monospace hyphens strung together--like this--to serve as an em dash.

When an actual em dash is unavailable—as in the ASCII character set—a double ("--") or triple hyphen-minus ("---") is used. In Unicode, the em dash is U+2014 (decimal 8212). In HTML, one may use the numeric forms — or —; there is also the HTML entity —. In TeX, the em dash may normally be input as a triple hyphen-minus (---). On a computer running the OS X operating system, most keyboard layouts map an em dash to Shift-Option-hyphen. On Microsoft Windows, an em dash may be entered as Alt+0151, where the digits are typed on the numeric keypad while holding the Alt key down. It can also be entered into Microsoft Office applications by using the ctrl-alt-hyphen combination.

En dash versus em dash

The en dash is half the width of the em dash. The width of the en dash was originally the width of the typeset lowercase letter 'n', while the width of the em dash was the width of an uppercase 'M'; hence the names. A more correct definition of the em width is the point size of the currently used font, since the M character does not occupy an exact square in many fonts.

Traditionally an em dash—like so—or a spaced em dash — like so — has been used for a dash in running text. The Elements of Typographic Style recommends the more concise spaced en dash – like so – and argues that the length and visual magnitude of an em dash "belongs to the padded and corseted aesthetic of Victorian typography." The spaced en dash is also the house style for certain major publishers (Penguin, Cambridge University Press, and Routledge among them). However, some longstanding typographical guides such as The Chicago Manual of Style still recommend unspaced em dashes for this purpose. The Oxford Guide to Style (2002, section 5.10.10) acknowledges that this style is used by "other British publishers", but observes that Oxford University Press (OUP) does not use it. In practice, there is little consensus, and it is a matter of personal or house taste; the important thing is that usage should be consistent.

The en dash (always with spaces, in running text) and the spaced em dash both have a certain technical advantage over the unspaced em dash. In most typesetting and most word processing, the spacing between words is expected to be variable, so there can be full justification. Alone among punctuation that marks pauses or logical relations in text, the unspaced em dash disables this for the words between which it falls. The effect can be uneven spacing in the text.

En dashes are often preferred to em dashes when text is set in narrow columns (as in newspapers and similar publications).

The spaced em dash risks introducing excessive separation of words: it is already long, and the spaces increase the separation. In full justification, the adjacent spaces may be stretched, and the separation of words is further exaggerated.

Regardless of any other variations, the em dash should never be used in number ranges.

Horizontal bar

The horizontal bar or quotation dash (--) is used to introduce quoted text. This is the standard method of printing dialogue in some languages (see the quotation dash section of the Quotation mark article for further details of how it is used).

If the quotation dash is unavailable, then the em dash can be used instead. In Unicode, the quotation dash is U+2015 (decimal 8213). In HTML, it can be input only with the numeric form, ― or ―; there is no equivalent character entity. But for web pages one generally uses the em dash. There is no support in the standard TeX fonts, but one can use \hbox{---}\kern-.5em--- instead (or just use an em dash).

Swung dash

Tilde#Lexicography

The swung dash (\sim or ~;) resembles a lengthened tilde, and is used to separate alternatives or approximates. In dictionaries, it is frequently used to stand in for the defined term in example text. This character was added since Unicode 4.0.0. Note that there are several similar characters: ? (U+223C: TILDE OPERATOR), ? (U+2053: SWUNG DASH), and ? (U+301C: WAVE DASH).

Example:

* henceforth (adverb), from this time forth; from now on; "\sim she will be known as Mrs. Smith".

In Japanese the swung dash (formally, the wave dash) is often used to indicate an extension of a vowel in slang. (See Japanese punctuation#Swung dash).

In Japanese and Korean the swung dash is often used in place of an en dash.

The swung dash in Unicode is U+2053 (decimal 8275). In HTML, it can be input only with the numeric form, ⁓ or ⁓; there is no equivalent HTML entity.

In LaTeX2?, one can use the math mode command $\sim$, which yields the tilde operator.

Other dash-like characters

The are several characters which resemble dashes but have different meanings and uses. These include:

* The hyphen-minus (-), Unicode U+002D, is the standard ASCII hyphen. It looks like a dash, but should only be used as such when proper dashes are unavailable. Sometimes this is used in groups to indicate different types of dash.
* The tilde (~), U+007E, is a diacritic mark.
* The underscore (_), U+005F, is either a diacritic mark, or a character replacing a standard space.
* The macron (¯), U+00AF, is another diacritic mark.
* The soft hyphen (U+00AD) is used to indicate where a line may break, as in a compound word or between syllables.
* The hyphen (-), U+2010, is a character which, unlike the ASCII hyphen, always represents a hyphen.
* The hyphen bullet (?), U+2043, is a short horizontal line used as a list bullet.
* The minus sign (-), U+2212, −, is an arithmetic operator used in mathematics to represent subtraction or negative numbers.
* The wave dash (?), U+301C, and the wavy dash (?), U+3030, are wavy lines found in some East Asian character sets. Typographically, they have the width of one CJK character cell (fullwidth form), and follow the direction of the text (horizontal for horizontal text, vertical for columnar). They are used as dashes, and occasionally as emphatic variants of the katakana vowel extender mark.
* The Armenian hyphen (?), U+058A, is a hyphen from the Armenian alphabet.
* The Hebrew Maqaf (-), U+05BE, is a hyphen-like character from the Hebrew alphabet.
* The Mongolian todo hyphen (?), U+1806, is a hyphen from the Mongolian alphabet.
* The Hangul Jungseong Eu (? U+3161 or ? U+1173) is used in Korean to indicate the sound [?].
* The Japanese cho-on (?), U+30FC, is used in Japanese to indicate a long vowel.
* The yi-/ichi (?), U+4E00, is a Chinese Character which means "one" in both Chinese and Japanese.

Rendering dashes on computers

Typewriters and computers have traditionally had only a limited character set, often having no key with which to produce a dash. In consequence, it became common to substitute the nearest incorrect punctuation mark or symbol. Em dashes are often represented by a pair of spaces surrounding a single hyphen-minus (typical British usage) or by a pair of spaces surrounding two hyphen-minuses (mostly in the United States).

Modern computer software typically has support for many more characters, and is usually capable of rendering both the en and em dashes correctly—albeit sometimes with a little inconvenience for the user who has to input them. Some software, though, may operate in a more limited mode. Some text editors, for example, are restricted to working with a single 8-bit character encoding, and when unencodable characters are entered (e.g., by pasting from the clipboard), they are often blindly converted to question marks. Sometimes this happens to em and en dashes, even when the 8-bit encoding supports them, or when an alternative representation using hyphen-minuses would seem to be an option.

Any kind of dash can manifest directly in an HTML document, but HTML also allows them to be entered as character entity references. The entity names for the em dash and the en dash are mdash and ndash; therefore, they can be referenced in HTML as — and –. The equivalent numeric character references are — and –. Nearly all web browsers and operating systems used today are capable of rendering the numeric form, and almost as many correctly display the named form.

* In Unicode, the figure dash, en dash, em dash, quotation dash, and swung dash correspond to characters U+2012, U+2013, U+2014, U+2015, and U+2053, respectively.

* In Mac OS using the Australian, British, Canadian, German, Irish, Irish Extended, Russian, U.S., or U.S. Extended keyboard layout, an en dash can be obtained by typing option-hyphen, while an em dash can be typed with option-shift-hyphen.

* In TeX, an em dash is typed as three hyphens ("---"), an en dash as two hyphens ("--"), and a hyphen-minus as one hyphen ("-"). Mathematical minus is signified as "$-$".

* Under recent versions of X11, you can obtain the em dash (—) by pressing the Compose key followed by - - - (triple hyphen-minus), and the en dash (–) can be obtained by pressing the Compose key followed by - - . (hyphen-minus, hyphen-minus, dot). In the absence of a compose key, it can be emulated by remapping some other seldom used key

* On Plan 9 systems, an en or em dash may be entered by pressing the Compose key (usually left Alt), followed by typing en or em respectively.

* In Microsoft Windows an en or em dash may be typed into most text areas by holding down the Alt key and pressing 0150 or 0151 respectively. The numbers must be typed on the numeric keypad with num lock turned on.

* With Microsoft Word's default settings (both Windows and Macintosh versions), an em dash symbol (not always a true em dash from the font) is automatically produced by Autocorrect when two unspaced hyphens are entered between words ("word--word"). An en dash (again, not always a true en dash from the font) is automatically produced when one or two hyphens surrounded by spaces are entered: ("word - word") or ("word -- word"). This feature can be disabled by customising Autocorrect. Other dashes, spaces, and special characters are possible, found through Tools ? Customize… ? Keyboard… ? Common Symbols. Unassigned symbols (such as the true minus sign) can be assigned keyboard shortcuts through Insert ? Symbol… ? (select desired symbol) ? Shortcut key… . To determine if the true en or em dash from the font are being used rather than a crossreferenced character from the Symbol font, copy and paste samples of the dashes into a text editor such as Windows Notepad. Using the true dash is important if one ever needs to share documents with other users in other applications or operating systems.
In Word for Windows, an em dash can be typed with ctrl+alt+numeric hyphen (on the numeric keypad, usually in the top right corner), and an en dash can be typed with ctrl+numeric hyphen. This will not work with the hyphen key on the main keyboard (usually between "0" and "="), which has completely different functions associated with it.

In professionally printed documents, the typographer sometimes adds hair space, or, rarely, a full inter-word space, on either side of an em dash. In HTML it is possible to generate a hair space using the numeric character reference  , but current-generation web browsers are not uniformly supportive of this character, and may render it incorrectly.

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