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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 +.
Wikipedia uses four: the hyphen (sometimes called the hyphen-minus), the minus sign, the en dash, and the em dash. Hyphen (- or -, MOS:HYPHEN; known as the hyphen-minus in ASCII and Unicode) are used in many ways on Wikipedia. They are the only short, horizontal dash-like character available as a separate key on most keyboards.
If you’ve ever found yourself confused about the difference between a dash and a hyphen, and when to use a hyphen, you’re far from alone. Now that you’ve got that rule straightened out ...
A hyphenation algorithm is a set of rules, especially one codified for implementation in a computer program, that decides at which points a word can be broken over two lines with a hyphen. For example, a hyphenation algorithm might decide that impeachment can be broken as impeach-ment or im-peachment but not impe-achment .
Hyphens are used in this way to prevent confusion; without their use, a reader might interpret the words separately, rather than as a phrase. Hyphens join the relevant words into a single idea, a compound adjective. A compound modifier that is spaced rather than hyphenated is referred to as an open compound. [2]
In France, a practice abolished in 2010 [15] was to use two consecutive hyphens (--) (not the same as a "long hyphen" or dash, or with a double hyphen) to distinguish between recently formed double surnames and ancient hyphenated family names (French: nom composé). The use of double surnames is legal but not customary.
The hyphen-minus-, also known as the keyboard hyphen and keyboard stroke, has several uses along its role as a word joiner. A separate line of 4 hyphens ----causes a horizontal-rule line to display. Also, a pipe-stroke, or vertical bar with hyphen |-denotes a row inside a wp:wikitable.
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