Hyphen

Also called hyphen-minus or dash.

How to type it

Right pinky. Introduced in Lesson 23: Punctuation: ' " -.

Common uses

• A hyphen joins the parts of compound words and modifiers, as in well-known author.
• It marks where a word breaks at the end of a line, and separates digits in phone numbers.

Less common uses

• The key on your keyboard is technically the hyphen-minus, which stands in for both the hyphen and the minus sign.
• On the command line, a leading hyphen marks an option, as in ls -l.
• Typographers use a longer minus sign, a separate character, for subtraction in print.