How to type Hyphen
To type Hyphen (‐), press Alt + 8208 on Windows, holding Alt while typing the digits on the numeric keypad, or write ‐ in HTML. On any system you can copy it from this page, or enter its codepoint U+2010 directly: Ctrl+Shift+U then 2010 on Linux, or 2010 then Alt+X in Microsoft Word.
Hyphen
- Copy it
- Unicode
- U+2010
- Windows
- Alt + 8208 needs regedit
| Where | Shortcut | How |
|---|---|---|
| Windows | Alt + 8208 | Above 255, so Windows will not accept it as typed. Copy the character instead. |
| Mac | N/A | Press the keys together. |
| HTML | ‐ | Paste this into HTML source. |
| Unicode | U+2010 | HYPHEN |
Symbols related to Hyphen
Unicode's confusables table, the one registrars use against spoofed domains, lists ‒ and – as close enough to be mistaken for it, and the rest are filed under dash in CLDR, the keyword list Unicode publishes alongside the names.
Other punctuation symbols
‐ lives in the General Punctuation block (U+2000-U+206F), dashes, quotation marks, spaces and reference marks used across languages. Within Unicode it is classified as Pd, a dash. Every hyphen and dash variant shares this category.
What Hyphen is used for
In mathematical notation ‐ is a variable: it stands for a quantity rather than acting on one, so an equation treats it the way it treats x, and the spacing around it is the spacing around a letter. That is the classification unicode-math gives it, and it is what decides how the symbol is set: $\mathhyphen$ in LaTeX, in maths mode rather than in a sentence.
Unicode publishes a second list of names for ‐ in CLDR, the keywords its own search data offers rather than the formal name, and it is dash. That word is what somebody looking for this character is liable to type when Hyphen is not the name they know it by, and the search on the symbol lists matches it as well as the Unicode name.
What ‐ gets confused with
Unicode's own confusables table, the one used to catch lookalike domain names, groups ‐ with - (U+002D, Hyphen-Minus), ‒ (U+2012, Figure Dash) and – (U+2013, En Dash). They are separate characters that render close enough to be mistaken for one another, so a search or a string comparison will separate them where your eye will not. If Hyphen is not matching where you expect it to, one of these is the usual reason.
What Unicode says about Hyphen
The code chart points from ‐ to hyphen-minus (U+002D) and soft hyphen (U+00AD). These are the characters the standard thinks you might have meant instead, which makes them the ones worth checking when Hyphen looks nearly right but not quite.
How Hyphen behaves in software
‐ is East Asian Ambiguous: one column in a Western locale and two in a CJK one. That is why a table that lines up on your machine can break on somebody else's, with no change to the text at all. It carries no direction of its own, so in a line that mixes English with Arabic or Hebrew it takes the direction of the text around it rather than forcing one.
Every way to write Hyphen
| Form | Value |
|---|---|
| Codepoint | U+2010 |
| Decimal | 8208 |
| UTF-8 bytes | E2 80 90 |
| UTF-16 bytes | 20 10 |
| HTML entity | ‐ |
| HTML numeric | ‐ or ‐ |
| CSS | \2010 |
| JavaScript | \u2010 |
| Python | \u2010 |
| URL-encoded | %E2%80%90 |
| LaTeX, in maths mode | $\mathhyphen$ |
| SVG | 2010.svg · (SIL Open Font License) |
If ‐ arrives as â€�
Its three UTF-8 bytes E2 80 90 are being read one at a time as Windows-1252. The text is undamaged; the reader has to be told it is UTF-8.