Hyphen-minus

"-" redirects here. For other uses, see - (disambiguation).

‌-
Hyphen-minus
Punctuation apostrophe ( ’ ' ) brackets ( [ ], ( ), { }, ⟨ ⟩ ) colon ( : ) comma ( , ) dash ( ‒, –, —, ― ) ellipsis ( …, ..., . . . ) exclamation mark ( ! ) full stop/period ( . ) guillemets ( « » ) hyphen ( ‐ ) hyphen-minus ( - ) question mark ( ? ) quotation marks ( ‘ ’, “ ”, ' ', " " ) semicolon ( ; ) slash‌/stroke‌/solidus ( /,  ⁄  ) Word dividers space ( ) ( ) ( ) interpunct ( · ) General typography ampersand ( & ) at sign ( @ ) asterisk ( * ) backslash ( \ ) bullet ( • ) caret ( ^ ) dagger ( †, ‡ ) degree ( ° ) ditto mark ( 〃 ) inverted exclamation mark ( ¡ ) inverted question mark ( ¿ ) number sign‌/pound‌/hash ( # ) numero sign ( № ) obelus ( ÷ ) ordinal indicator ( º, ª ) percent, per mil ( %, ‰, ‱ ) pilcrow ( ¶ ) prime ( ′, ″, ‴ ) section sign ( § ) tilde ( ~ ) underscore‌/understrike ( _ ) vertical bar‌/broken bar‌/pipe ( ¦, | ) Intellectual property copyright symbol ( © ) registered trademark ( ® ) sound recording copyright ( ℗ ) service mark ( ℠ ) trademark ( ™ ) Currency currency (generic) ( ¤ ) currency (specific) ( ₳ ฿ ₵ ¢ ₡ ₢ ₠ $ ₫ ৳ ₯ € ƒ ₣ ₲ ₴ ₭ ℳ ₥ ₦ ₧ ₱ ₰ £ ₹ ₨ ₪ ₸ ₮ ₩ ¥ ៛ ) Uncommon typography asterism ( ⁂ ) tee ( ⊤ ) up tack ( ⊥ ) index/fist ( ☞ ) therefore sign ( ∴ ) because sign ( ∵ ) interrobang ( ‽ ) irony punctuation ( ؟ ) lozenge ( ◊ ) reference mark ( ※ ) tie ( ⁀ ) Related diacritical marks whitespace characters non-English quotation style ( « », „ ” )
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The hyphen-minus ( - ) is a character used in digital documents and computing to represent a hyphen ( ‐ ) or a minus sign ( − ) . It is present in Unicode as code point U+002D - hyphen-minus; it is also in ASCII with the same value.

The use of one character for hyphen and minus, and sometimes also for en dash, was a compromise made in the early days of fixed-width typewriters and computer displays. However, in proper typesetting and graphic design, there are distinct characters for hyphens, dashes, and the minus sign. Usage of the hyphen-minus nonetheless persists in many contexts, as it is well-known, easy to enter on keyboards, and in the same location in all common character sets.

Most programming languages, restricting themselves to ASCII, use the hyphen-minus, rather than the Unicode character U+2212 − minus sign, for denoting subtraction and negative numbers.

Commonly, an em dash is represented by two hyphen-minus signs in succession, or even three in TeX markup.

See also

• Dash
• Hyphen
• Plus and minus signs
• -- (disambiguation)