Misplaced Pages

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This is an explanatory essay about the Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style. This page provides additional information about concepts in the page(s) it supplements. This page is not one of Misplaced Pages's policies or guidelines as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community.

Everything you need to know about hyphens - and dashes: endashes – and emdashes — in one easy lesson.

Hyphens are used in many ways on Misplaced Pages; see MOS:HYPHEN. They are the only short, horizontal dashlike character available on most keyboards, and are used as hyphens, minus signs, and dashes, both endash and emdash. For clarity, negative numbers are entered using an endash in newspapers, instead of a minus sign or a hyphen. This is not done in Misplaced Pages. Often a hyphen is used for a minus sign, other than in math formulas, where it is styled as an endash or emdash.

In hyphenated names, such as Julia Louis-Dreyfus, a hyphen is used, as is the case in many other proper nouns, but not Seattle–Tacoma International Airport. This follows Misplaced Pages style guidelines.

There are actually eight different horizontal dashlike characters of varying lengths that can be used. Misplaced Pages only uses four: the hyphen, the minus sign, the endash, and the emdash.

1. - is a hyphen-minus (ASCII keyboard or Unicode 002D) -
2. ‐ is a hyphen (Unicode 2010)
3. ⁃ is a hyphen bullet (Unicode 2043)—it's probably not a good idea to use hyphen bullets for a list such as this one!
4. − is a minus (Unicode 2212)—this can also be entered from the Special characters: Symbols bar, it's between the ± and ×
5. ‒ is a figure dash (Unicode 2012)
6. – is an endash (Unicode 2013)—this can also be entered from the Special characters: Symbols bar, it's between the m³ and —
7. — is an emdash (Unicode 2014)—this can also be entered from the Special characters: Symbols bar, it's between the – and …
8. ― is a horizontal bar (Unicode 2015)

Endashes are slightly longer than hyphens and are used in date ranges and to join two names in a phrase, such as 1849–63, or the Michelson–Morley experiment, or to separate phrases – in a sentence. See MOS:ENDASH.

Emdashes are even longer, and are used to set aside a phrase—like this—in a sentence. See MOS:EMDASH. A spaced hyphen - like this - can substitute for an emdash.

Minus signs are also available for negative numbers such as −4, but hyphens are routinely used instead. See Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style#Common mathematical symbols.

Hyphens can be used initially for all of the above, although any editor is welcome to later replace them with the more precise form.

• Misplaced Pages supplemental pages