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Definition from Wiktionary, a free dictionary

Contents 1 Translingual 1.1 Symbol 1.2 See also 1.3 Usage notes 2 English 2.1 Symbol 2.2 Usage notes

[edit] Translingual

[edit] Symbol

- (U+002D)

1. Hyphen-minus symbol, used as a hyphen, minus sign, and a dash.

[edit] See also

• Hyphen-minus on Wikipedia.Wikipedia:Hyphen-minus

Punctuation

apostrophe ( ' ) ( ’ ) brackets ( ( ) ) ( [ ] ) ( { } ) ( 〈 〉 ) colon ( : )

comma ( , ) dashes ( ‒ ) ( – ) ( — ) ( ― ) ellipsis ( … )

exclamation mark ( ! ) full stop/period ( . ) hyphen ( - ) ( ‐ )

interrobang ( ‽ ) question mark ( ? ) quotation marks ( ‘ ’ ) ( “ ” )

semicolon ( ; ) slash/solidus ( / ) ( ⁄ ) space (   ) interpunct ( · )

[edit] Usage notes

The multiple uses of this character was a compromise that made sense in the early days of fixed-width typewriters and computer displays but is considered to be ugly in proper typesetting. Nonetheless its usage persists as it is easy to enter on keyboards, well known, and at the same place in all common character sets.

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[edit] English

[edit] Symbol

-

1. (computing) The ASCII symbol used to indicate subtraction.
2. (linguistics) The symbol used to hyphenate compound terms.
3. (linguistics) The symbol used to combine separate clauses into a single run-on sentence.
4. (linguistics) The symbol used to break a word from the end of one line to the start of the next, at the most convenient syllabic break.
5. (chemistry) A single bond.

[edit] Usage notes

• In British English, compounds formed from two words are hyphenated (or not) to show the use. Compound nouns from two words are normally kept as two words, compound adjectives are hyphenated to show the additive modifying properties more clearly.
• In American English, compound words are formed more liberally than in British English. Hyphenated compound nouns are also much more common in colloquial American English.