Introduction

This is part one of a four-part series on dashes and hyphens that is intended to replace an earlier article.

Part one (this article) deals purely with the mechanics of producing a given dash/rule/sign/glyph in a document using four MS Office products; Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Publisher. Parts 2–4 deal with hyphens, en dashes and em dashes respectively.

Background

Tests were carried out in Windows 7, using MS Office 2010, and using the Calibri font. More recent OS and Office may make a difference, as might other fonts. Finding out which of my installed fonts support all the dashes examined in this article would have made next week’s article late as well as this one!

As I researched for this article, I discovered more and more about the subject. I won’t use the onion layers metaphor—I’ve never seen an onion with as many layers as I’ve peeled away on the dash debate. Suffice to say that the quote about hyphens driving a person mad is true, and my observation in my earlier article that the quote could be extended to include dashes is also true!

Characters in Scope

This article looks at the following.

• Hyphens
  • Regular hyphens
  • Non-breaking hyphens
  • Optional hyphens, aka soft hyphens, aka discretionary hyphens
• En dashes, aka En rules
• Em dashes, aka Em rules
• Minus sign
• Figure dash
• Full-width hyphen-minus

There also exists a character called “Commercial Minus Sign” (Unicode U+2052). This is one of the onion layers that I’m leaving unpeeled.

This table allows you to compare the characters (Typeface is Calibri). Click on the table for a closer look. Some of the differences are subtle. The full-width hyphen-minus has square ends while the others are slightly rounded. The red vertical lines are placed to allow you to compare the lengths of some of the characters.

Methods Examined

The following methods of producing the characters are covered.

• Keyboard (key, shortcut, combo)
• Insert symbol feature
• Entry of Unicode character code in hexadecimal
• Entry of ASCII/ANSI character code in decimal
• Entry of Unicode character code in decimal

I’ve read criticism by some writers that they are expected to understand hexadecimal. As an ex-systems programmer, hexadecimal is second nature to me, but I would contend that writers don’t need to understand hexadecimal; they merely need to understand that a code value may contain the letters A–F as well as the numbers 0–9.

Methods Available by Character

In the tables below, if a product is not present for a given method, it indicates that the method is not available for that product.

Regular Hyphen

This is the one character under discussion that has a key on the keyboard for it—in fact, it has two. Use either. Unless you are writing something very specialized, you will use the same character as a minus sign. A fuller description of hyphens is available here.

Non-breaking Hyphen

A non-breaking hyphen looks like a regular hyphen, but will keep the text either side of it together on the same line. This is useful in situations such as when dates are formatted with hyphens (e.g. 2016-03-07)—non-breaking hyphens ensure that the entire date will appear on the same line. Another example of its use would be to keep the commas with the hyphens in “two-, three-, and four-ply tissue”.

Method	‑	Keystroke Sequence
Keyboard	Word	CTRL + SHIFT + _
	PUB	CTRL + SHIFT + _
Insert Symbol	Word	Insert | Symbol |More symbols | Special Characters
	Excel	Insert | Symbol |More symbols | Special Characters
	PPT	Insert | Symbol | Select “General Punctuation” from “Subset”
	PUB	Insert | Symbol |More symbols | Special Characters
Unicode Hex	Word	2011 ALT + x Possible bug. When you first enter the above sequence, the hyphen acts like a regular hyphen. If you press ALT + x then ALT + x again, it starts behaving like a non-breaking hyphen.
ASCII/ANSI		No ANSI value for this character
Unicode Decimal	Word	ALT + (on numeric keypad) 08209 or 8209
	PPT	ALT + (on numeric keypad) 8209

According to this webpage, Word is using 0x1F for a non-breaking hyphen, but I can’t verify this.

Soft Hyphen

Also known as an optional hyphen or a discretionary hyphen, this character allows you to specify where a word or string of characters may split if the software deems a split necessary.

Method	¬	Keystroke Sequence
Keyboard	Word*	CTRL + – (the “-“ on the main keyboard)
	PUB	CTRL + – (the “-“ on the main keyboard)
Insert Symbol	Word*	Insert | Symbol |More symbols | Special Characters
	Excel	Insert | Symbol |More symbols | Special Characters
	PPT	Insert | Symbol | Select “Latin-1 Supplement” from “Subset”
	PUB	Insert | Symbol |More symbols | Special Characters
Unicode Hex	Word	Not available. Entering 00AD and pressing ALT + x generates a hyphen, but it does not behave like a soft hyphen.
ASCII/ANSI	Word	Not available. Entering ALT + (num) 0173 generates a hyphen, but it does not behave like a soft hyphen.
	PPT†	ALT + (on numeric keypad) 0173
	PUB	Not available. Entering ALT + (num) 0173 generates a hyphen, but it does not behave like a soft hyphen.
Unicode Decimal	Word*	Not available. Entering ALT + (num) 0173 generates a hyphen, but it does not behave like a soft hyphen.
	PPT

Note that pressing ALT + x will not show the Unicode value of this insertion.

* Shows as a “¬” if you have “show formatting marks” set and “show optional hyphen” checked.

† There is no visual evidence that the optional hyphen has been created, until line overflow causes your text to wrap to the next line and the string containing the optional hyphen is positioned at the end of the overflowing line. (Unfortunately, Powerpoint has no “show formatting marks” feature.

According to this webpage, Word is using 0x1E for a soft hyphen, but I can’t verify this.

En Dash

Also known as an en rule, this dash is used for such things as connecting ranges of values. A fuller description of its use is available here.

Method	–	Keystroke Sequence
Keyboard	Word	CTRL + – on the numeric keypad
	PUB	CTRL + – on the numeric keypad
Insert Symbol	Word	Insert | Symbol |More symbols | Special Characters
	Excel	Insert | Symbol |More symbols | Special Characters
	PPT	Insert | Symbol | Select “General Punctuation” from “Subset”
	PUB	Insert | Symbol |More symbols | Special Characters
Unicode Hex	Word	2013 ALT + x
ASCII/ANSI	Word	ALT + (on numeric keypad) 0150
	PPT	ALT + (on numeric keypad) 0150
	PUB	ALT + (on numeric keypad) 0150
Unicode Decimal	Word	ALT + (on numeric keypad) 08211 or 8211
	PPT	ALT + (on numeric keypad) 8211

Em Dash

Also known as an em rule, this dash is used for such things as indicating an aside, a clarification or some other parenthetical material. A fuller description of its use is available here.

Method	—	Keystroke Sequence
Keyboard**	Word	Two hyphens with no space between or either side
	PPT	Two hyphens with no space between or either side
	PUB	Two hyphens with no space between or either side
Keyboard	Word	Insert | Symbol |More symbols | Special Characters
	Excel	Insert | Symbol |More symbols | Special Characters
	PPT	Insert | Symbol | Select “General Punctuation” from “Subset”
	PUB	Insert | Symbol |More symbols | Special Characters
Unicode Hex	Word	2014 ALT + x
ASCII/ANSI	Word	ALT + (on numeric keypad) 0151
	PPT	ALT + (on numeric keypad) 0151
	PUB	ALT + (on numeric keypad) 0151
Unicode Decimal	Word	ALT + (on numeric keypad) 08212 or 8212
	PPT	ALT + (on numeric keypad) 8212

**This keyboard action is controlled by a checkbox in the Autocorrect panel. To turn it on or off,

1. select Options from the File tab,
2. select Proofing, click the AutoCorrect Options button,
3. then select the Autoformat As You Type tab,
4. check or uncheck the Hyphens with dash option.

Minus Sign, Figure Dash, and Full-width Hyphen-minus

In the vast majority of situations, you will not use these characters. The hyphen key on the keyboard suffices in most cases.

The minus sign would be used in situations where it is important that the minus sign is more visible than the usual hyphen sign and/or the text needs to be machine-readable and machine recognition of the minus sign is important. Some editors might insist on using the correct character (I’ve never worked in such a highly disciplined environment).

The Figure Dash would be used in number strings such as phone numbers and social insurance numbers—i.e. numbers that need to be separated with dashes, but which aren’t ranges (and therefore shouldn’t be separated with en dashes).

I cannot imagine a use for the Full-width Hyphen-minus, but it is available if you have a use for it.

There are no keyboard stroke sequences for any of these in any of the Office products that I’m analyzing in this article. They must be inserted using Unicode. None of these characters are available in Excel or Publisher.

Method		Minus Sign	Figure Dash	Full-width…
Unicode Hex	Word	2212 ALT + x	2012 ALT + x	FF0D ALT + x
Unicode Decimal	Word	ALT + (on numeric keypad) 08722 or 8722	ALT + (on numeric keypad) 08210 or 8210	ALT + (on numeric keypad) 62593
	PPT	ALT + (on numeric keypad) 8722	ALT + (on numeric keypad) 8210	ALT + (on numeric keypad) 62593

Observations

Of the four products examined, Word is both the most comprehensively-equipped and the least frustrating. Excel quite understandably contains the fewest features. Powerpoint and Publisher are relatively patchy, though not in the same places.

Given that Publisher is a tool for creating publications, I would’ve expected better. I’ve read criticisms of Publisher, but (a) I had put it down to Microsoft-bashing and (b) I’ve never used any of Publisher’s competitors. Adobe InDesign is a far superior product (from what I’ve read) in terms of high-end publishing, but I’m looking at basic text layout features in this article, and anyone who wants to “do it right” with dashes is going to have to work at it harder in Publisher than in Word.

Comments

Visually, there is little or no difference between the en dash, the minus sign, and the figure dash. However, using the correct one sometimes aids in operations such as search and replace, re-purposing material, and so on. Having said that, I have yet to work on a project that requires me to make distinctions between the en dash, the minus sign, the figure dash, and the full-width hyphen-minus.

Gathering the information for this article and doing (non-exhaustive) tests has been a task of epic proportions. Laying the information out in a way that’s accessible was another big challenge. I hope that I’ve hit the sweet spot between too little and too much information.

Summary of Character Codes

The following table summarizes the character codes for the various characters under discussion here as well as for a couple of extras. If you’re familiar with using these character codes to create characters, this table may be useful to you.

	ASCII/ANSII	Unicode	HTML Code	HTML Tag
Hyphen-minus (the oldie but goldie	45 (0x3D)	U+002D	-
Hyphen	45 (0x3D)	U+2010	‐
Non-breaking hyphen		U+2011	‑
Soft hyphen	173 (0xAD)	U+00AD	­	­ **
En dash	150 (0x96)	U+2013	–	–
Em dash	151 (0x97)	U+2014	—	—
Two-em dash		U+2E3A	⸺
Three-em dash		U+2E3B	⸻
Minus sign		U+2212	−
Figure dash		U+2012	‒
Full-width hyphen-minus		U+FF0D	;”>－ (not tested)

** CSS3 has a draft module for new features for controlling hyphenation. It’s been in draft since Nov 2013.

The Long and Short

There’s a lot of information here. I’ve done my best to test everything I’ve included in this article, but there may be errors or omissions. If you spot any, please let me know. If you know of a list of typefaces that support all the characters under discussion, please let me know.