| - | |
|---|---|
Hyphen-minus | |
| In Unicode | U+002D -HYPHEN-MINUS |
| Graphical variants | |
| ﹣ | |
| U+FE63 ﹣SMALL HYPHEN-MINUS | |
| － | |
| U+FF0D －FULLWIDTH HYPHEN-MINUS | |
| Different from | |
| Different from | U+2010 ‐HYPHEN U+2011 ‑NON-BREAKING HYPHEN |
The symbol-, known inUnicode ashyphen-minus, is the form ofhyphen most commonly used in digitaldocuments. On most keyboards, it is the only character that resembles aminus sign or adash, so it is also used for these.[1] The namehyphen-minus derives from the originalASCII standard,[2] where it was calledhyphen (minus).[3] The character is referred to as ahyphen, aminus sign, or adash according to the context where it is being used.
| -+−– -+−– | |
|---|---|
| hyphen-minus, plus, minus, and en-dash characters in proportional and monospaced fonts |
In earlytypewriters andcharacter encodings, a single key/code was almost always used for hyphen, minus, various dashes, and strikethrough, since they all have a similar appearance. The currentUnicode Standard specifies distinct characters for several differentdashes, an unambiguousminus sign (sometimes called theUnicode minus) atcode point U+2212, an unambiguoushyphen (sometimes called theUnicode hyphen) at U+2010, the hyphen-minus at U+002D and avariety of other hyphen symbols for various uses. When a hyphen is called for, the hyphen-minus is a common choice as it is well known, easy to enter onkeyboards, and still the only form recognized by many data formats and computer languages. Though the Unicode Standard states that the U+2010 hyphen is "preferred" over the hyphen-minus,[4] the standard itself uses the hyphen-minus as its hyphen character.[5]
In most moderncomputer fonts, the hyphen-minus is either identical or very similar to the Unicode hyphen.[6][a]
In mathematical texts that include the plus sign, the Unicode minus is preferred to the hyphen-minus, because its metrics match the plus sign in level and length.[b]
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 anem dash—,[7] and to put spaces around it - to represent aspaced en dash – ; this practice is deprecated in professionaltypography.[8] Someword processorsautomatically convert these to the correct dash. The character can also be typed multiple times to simulate a horizontal line (though in most cases, repeated entry of theunderscore will produce a solid line). Alternating the hyphen-minus with spaces produces a "dashed" line, often to indicate where paper is to be cut. On a typewriter, over-striking a section of text with this is used forstrikethrough.
Someprogramming languages use the hyphen-minus for denoting subtraction andadditive inverse, often callednegation[9] in this context.[10][11] It is rarely used to indicate a range, due to ambiguity with subtraction. Generally, other characters, such as the UnicodeU+2212 −MINUS SIGN are not recognized as anoperator.[citation needed]
In some programming languages (for exampleMySQL)-- (two hyphen-minus) mark the beginning of acomment. It can be used to start thesignature block inUsenet news system.YAML uses--- (three hyphen-minuses) to end a section.
The hyphen-minus character is often used when specifyingcommand-line options, a convention popularized byUnix. Examples of the "short" form are-R or-q. A user can specify both by using-Rq. Some implementations allow two hyphen-minuses to specify "long" option names as--recursive or--quiet. These are easier to understand when reading commands (some software does not care about the number of hyphen-minuses, and either does not allow combinations of single-letter options, or requires the user to rearrange them, so they do not match a long option). A double hyphen-minus by itself (followed by a space) indicates that there are no more options, which is useful when one needs to specify a filename that starts with a hyphen-minus. An option of just a hyphen-minus (followed by a space) may be recognizedin lieu of a filename and indicates thatstdin is to be read.
diff output- is used to denote deleted lines indiff output in thecontext format or theunified format.
The glyph has acode point inUnicode asU+002D -HYPHEN-MINUS. It is also inASCII with the same value.
Loose vs. Precise Semantics. Some ASCII characters have multiple uses, either through ambiguity in the original standards or through accumulated reinterpretations of a limited codeset. For example, 27 hex is defined in ANSI X3.4 as apostrophe (closing single quotation mark; acute accent), and 2D hex as hyphen minus. In general, the Unicode standard provides the same interpretation for the equivalent code values, without adding to or subtracting from their semantics. The Unicode standard supplies unambiguous codes elsewhere for the most useful particular interpretations of these ASCII values; the corresponding unambiguous characters are cross-referenced in the character names list for this block. In a few cases, the Unicode standard indicates the generic interpretation of an ASCII code in the name of the corresponding Unicode character, for example U+0027 is APOSTROPHE-QUOTE'.
Ahyphen is usually very short (it has its own Unicode character, but you can use the hyphen-minus instead because it looks the same) ...
In typescript, a double hyphen (--) is often used for a long dash. Double hyphens in a typeset document are a sure sign that the type was set by a typist, not a typographer. A typographer will use an em dash, three-quarter em, or en dash, depending on context or personal style. The em dash is the nineteenth-century standard, still prescribed in many editorial style books, but the em dash is too long for use with the best text faces. Like the oversized space between sentences, it belongs to the padded and corseted aesthetic of Victorian typography.
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