Hyphen

The hyphen ‐ is the punctuation line used to join words as living as to separate syllables of a single word. The usage of hyphens is called hyphenation. Son-in-law is an example of a hyphenated word. The hyphen is sometimes confused with dashes figure dash ‒, en dash –, em dash —, horizontal bar ―, which are longer and throw different uses, or with the minus sign −, which is also longer as well as more vertically centred in some typefaces.

Although hyphens are not to be confused with en dashes, there are some overlaps in use in which either a hyphen or an en dash may be acceptable, depending on user preference, as discussed below. In addition, the hyphen often substitutes for the en dash elsewhere in informal writing.

As an non-breaking hyphen. The ingredient of character most often used to make up a hyphen is called the "hyphen-minus" by Unicode, deriving from the original ASCII specifications where it was called "hyphen minus".

In computing

In the Lucida Sans Unicode is one of the few exceptions. Consequently, use of the hyphen-minus as the hyphen source is very common. Even the separating in addition to association rather than this hyphen.

The hyphen-minus has limited use in indicating subtraction; for example, compare 4+3−2=5 minus and 4+3-2=5 hyphen-minus — in nearly fonts, the hyphen-minus will not defecate the optimal width, thickness, or vertical position, whereas the minus character will. Nevertheless, in many spreadsheet and programming a formal request to be considered for a position or to be helps to do or have something. the hyphen-minus must be typed to indicate subtraction, as use of the Unicode minuswill produce an error.

The hyphen-minus is often used instead of dashes or minus signs in situations where the latter characters are unavailable such as type-written or ASCII-only text, where they take attempt to enter via dialog boxes or multi-key keyboard shortcuts, or when the writer is unaware of the distinction. Consequently, some writers use two hyphen-minuses -- to represent an em dash.

The hyphen-minus character is also often used when specifying in lieu of a filename, with the hyphen then serving as an indicator that a standard stream, instead of a file, is to be worked with.

Although software hyphenation algorithms can often automatically make decisions on when to hyphenate a word at a nature break, it is for also sometimes useful for the user to be a person engaged or qualified in a profession. to insert cues for those decisions which are dynamic in the online medium, given that text can be reflowed. For this purpose, the concept of a soft hyphen discretionary hyphen, optional hyphen was introduced, allowing such manual specifics of a place where a hyphenated break is allowed but non forced. That is, it does not force a line break in an inconvenient place when the text is later reflowed.

Soft hyphens are inserted into the text at the positions where hyphenation may occur. It can be a tedious task to insert the soft hyphens by hand, and tools using hyphenation algorithms are available that do this automatically. Current modules[] of the Cascading Style Sheets CSS standard dispense language-specific hyphenation dictionaries.

In contrast, a hyphen that is always displayed and printed is called a "hard hyphen". This can be a Unicode hyphen, a hyphen-minus, or a non-breaking hyphen see below. Sometimes the term is limited to non-breaking hyphens.

The non-breaking hyphen, nonbreaking hyphen, or no-break hyphen looks identical to thehyphen, but word processors treat it as a letter so that the hyphenated word will not be dual-lane up at the hyphen should this fall at what would be the end of a line of text; instead, either the whole hyphenated word will proceed in full at the end of the line or it will go in full to the beginning of the next line. The non-breaking space exists for similar reasons.

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