Hyphen

Hyphen
-
Hyphen-minus Non-breaking 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.[1]

The hyphen is sometimes confused with dashes (en dash , em dash and others), which are wider, or with the minus sign , which is also wider and usually drawn a little higher to match the crossbar in the plus sign +.

As an orthographic concept, the hyphen is a single entity. In character encoding for use with computers, it is represented in Unicode by any of several characters. These include the dual-use hyphen-minus, the soft hyphen, the nonbreaking hyphen, and an unambiguous form known familiarly as the "Unicode hyphen", shown at the top of the infobox on this page. The character most often used to represent a hyphen (and the one produced by the key on a keyboard) is called the "hyphen-minus" by Unicode, deriving from the original ASCII standard, where it was called "hyphen (minus)".[2]

  1. ^ "Hyphen Definition". dictionary.com. Retrieved 18 June 2015.
  2. ^ "American National Standard X3.4-1977: American Standard Code for Information Interchange" (PDF). National Institute of Standards and Technology. p. 10 (4.2 Graphic characters).