Hyphen

This article is about the punctuation mark. For other uses, seeHyphen (disambiguation).

Thehyphen‐is apunctuationmark used to joinwordsand to separatesyllablesof a single word. The use of hyphens is calledhyphenation.

‐
Hyphen
- ‑ Hyphen-minus Non-breaking hyphen

The hyphen is sometimes confused withdashes(en dash–,em dash—and others), which are wider, or with theminus sign−,which is also wider and usually drawn a little higher to match the crossbar in theplus sign+.

As anorthographicconcept, the hyphen is a single entity. Incharacter encodingfor use with computers, it is represented inUnicodeby any of severalcharacters.These include the dual-usehyphen-minus,thesoft hyphen,thenonbreaking hyphen,and an unambiguous form known familiarly as the "Unicode hyphen", shown at the top of the infobox on this page. The character most often used to represent a hyphen (and the one produced by the key on a keyboard) is called the "hyphen-minus" by Unicode, deriving from the originalASCIIstandard, where it was called "hyphen(minus) ".

Etymology

The word is derived from Ancient Greekὑφ' ἕν(huph' hén), contracted fromὑπό ἕν(hypó hén), "in one" (literally "under one" ).An(ἡ) ὑφέν((he) hyphén) was anundertie-like‿sign written below two adjacent letters to indicate that they belong to the same word when it was necessary to avoid ambiguity, beforeword spacingwas practiced.

History

First page of the first volume: theepistle of St Jerome to Paulinusfrom the University of Texas copy. The page has 40 lines.

The first known documentation of the hyphen is in the grammatical works ofDionysius Thrax.At the time hyphenation was joining two words that would otherwise be read separately by a lowtie markbetween the two words.In Greek these marks were known asenotikon,officiallyromanizedas a hyphen.

With the introduction ofletter spacingin theMiddle Ages,the hyphen, still written beneath the text, reversed its meaning. Scribes used the mark to connect two words that had been incorrectly separated by a space. This era also saw the introduction of the marginal hyphen, for words broken across lines.

The modern format of the hyphen originated withJohannes Gutenbergof Mainz, Germany,c. 1455with the publication of his 42-lineBible.His tools did not allow for asublinearhyphen, and he thus moved it to the middle of the line.Examination of an original copy onvellum(Hubay index #35) in theU. S. Library of Congressshows that Gutenberg's movable type was set justified in a uniform style, 42 equal lines per page. The Gutenberg printing press required words made up of individual letters of type to be held in place by a surrounding nonprinting rigid frame. Gutenberg solved the problem of making each line the same length to fit the frame by inserting a hyphen as the last element at the right-side margin. This interrupted the letters in the last word, requiring the remaining letters be carried over to the start of the line below. Hisdouble hyphen,⸗,appears throughout the Bible as a short, double line inclined to the right at a 60-degree angle.

Use in English

For Wikipedia's own standards for hyphen use, seeWikipedia:Manual of Style § Hyphens.

TheEnglish languagedoes not have definitive hyphenation rules,though variousstyle guidesprovide detailed usage recommendations and have a significant amount of overlap in what they advise. Hyphens are mostly used to break single words into parts or to join ordinarily separate words into single words. Spaces are not placed between a hyphen and either of the elements it connects except when using a suspended or "hanging" hyphen that stands in for a repeated word (e.g.,nineteenth- andtwentieth-centurywriters). Style conventions that apply to hyphens (and dashes) have evolved to support ease of reading in complex constructions; editors often accept deviations if they aid rather than hinder easy comprehension.

The use of the hyphen inEnglish compoundnouns and verbs has, in general, been steadily declining. Compounds that might once have been hyphenated are increasingly left with spaces or are combined into one word. Reflecting this changing usage, in 2007, the sixth edition of theShorter Oxford English Dictionaryremoved the hyphens from 16,000 entries, such asfig-leaf(nowfig leaf),pot-belly(nowpot belly), andpigeon-hole(nowpigeonhole).The increasing prevalence of computer technology and the advent of the Internet have given rise to a subset of common nouns that might have been hyphenated in the past (e.g.,toolbar,hyperlink,andpastebin).

Despite decreased use, hyphenation remains the norm in certain compound-modifier constructions and, among some authors, with certain prefixes (seebelow). Hyphenation is also routinely used as part ofsyllabificationinjustifiedtexts to avoid unsightly spacing (especially incolumnswith narrowline lengths,as when used withnewspapers).

Separating

Justification and line-wrapping

When flowing text, it is sometimes preferable to break a word into two so that it continues on another line rather than moving the entire word to the next line. The word may be divided at the nearest break point between syllables (syllabification) and a hyphen inserted to indicate that the letters form a word fragment, rather than a full word. This allows more efficient use of paper, allows flush appearance of right-side margins (justification) without oddly large word spaces, and decreases the problem ofrivers.This kind of hyphenation is most useful when the width of the column (called the "line length" in typography) is very narrow. For example:

Justified text without hyphenation		Justified text with hyphenation
We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America...		We, therefore, the represen- tatives of the United States of America...

Rules (or guidelines) for correct hyphenation vary between languages, and may be complex, and they can interact with otherorthographicandtypesettingpractices.Hyphenation algorithms,when employed in concert with dictionaries, are sufficient for all but the most formal texts.

It may be necessary to distinguish an incidental line-break hyphen from one integral to a wordbeing mentioned(as when used in adictionary) or present in an original text being quoted (when in acritical edition), not only to control itsword wrapbehavior (whichencodinghandles withhard and soft hyphenshaving the sameglyph) but also to differentiate appearance (with a different glyph).Webster's Third New International Dictionaryand theChambers Dictionaryuse adouble hyphenfor integral hyphens and a single hyphen for line-breaks, whereas Kromhout's Afrikaans–English dictionary uses the opposite convention.TheConcise Oxford Dictionary(fifth edition)suggested repeating an integral hyphen at the start of the following line.

Prefixes and suffixes

Prefixes(such asde-,pre-,re-,andnon-) andsuffixes(such as-less,-like,-ness,and-hood) are sometimes hyphenated, especially when the unhyphenated spelling resembles another word or when theaffixationis deemed misinterpretable, ambiguous, or somehow "odd-looking" (for example, having two consecutivemonographsthat look like thedigraphsof English, like e+a, e+e, or e+i). However, the unhyphenated style, which is also calledclosed uporsolid,is usually preferred, particularly when thederivativehas been relatively familiarized or popularized through extensive use in various contexts. As arule of thumb,affixes are not hyphenated unless the lack of a hyphen would hurt clarity.

The hyphen may be used between vowel letters (e.g.,ee,ea,ei) to indicate that they do not form adigraph.Some words have both hyphenated and unhyphenated variants:de-escalate/deescalate,co-operation/cooperation,re-examine/reexamine,de-emphasize/deemphasize,and so on. Words often lose their hyphen as they become more common, such asemailinstead ofe-mail.When there are tripled letters, the hyphenated variant of these words is often more common (as inshell-likeinstead ofshelllike).

Closed-up style is avoided in some cases: possiblehomographs,such asrecreation(fun or sport) versusre-creation(the act of creating again),retreat(turn back) versusre-treat(givetherapyagain), andun-ionized(not inionform) versusunionized(organized intotrade unions); combinations withpropernouns or adjectives (un-American,de-Stalinisation);acronyms(anti-TNF antibody,non-SI units); or numbers (pre-1949 diplomacy,pre-1492 cartography). Althoughproto-oncogeneis still hyphenated by bothDorland'sandMerriam-Webster's Medical,the solid (that is, unhyphenated) styling (protooncogene) is a common variant, particularly among oncologists and geneticists.

Adiaeresismay also be used in a like fashion, either to separate and mark off monographs (as incoöperation) or to signalize avocalicterminal e (for example,Brontë). This use of the diaeresis peaked in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but it was never applied extensively across the language: only a handful of diaereses, includingcoöperationandBrontë,are encountered with any appreciable frequency in English; thusreëxamine,reïterate,deëmphasize,etc. are seldom encountered. In borrowings from Modern French, whoseorthographyutilizes the diaeresis as a means to differentiategraphemes,various English dictionaries list the dieresis as optional (as innaiveandnaïve) despite the juxtaposition of a and i.

Syllabification and spelling

Hyphens are occasionally used to denotesyllabification,as insyl-la-bi-fi-ca-tion.Various British and North American dictionaries use aninterpunct,sometimes called a "middle dot" or "hyphenation point", for this purpose, as insyl·la·bi·fi·ca·tion.This allows the hyphen to be reserved only for places where a hard hyphen is intended (for example,self-con·scious,un·self-con·scious,long-stand·ing). Similarly, hyphens may be used to indicate how a word is being or should be spelled. For example,W-O-R-D spells "word".

In nineteenth-century American literature, hyphens were also used irregularly to divide syllables in words from indigenous North American languages, without regard for etymology or pronunciation,such as "Shuh-shuh-gah" (fromOjibwezhashagi,"blue heron" ) inThe Song of Hiawatha.This usage is now rare and proscribed, except in some place names such asAh-gwah-ching.

Joining

Compound modifiers

Further information:Compound modifierandEnglish compound § Hyphenated compound modifiers

Compound modifiersare groups of two or more words that jointly modify the meaning of another word. When a compound modifier other than anadverb–adjectivecombination appearsbeforea term, the compound modifier is often hyphenated to prevent misunderstanding, such as inAmerican-footballplayerorlittle-celebratedpaintings.Without the hyphen, there is potential confusion about whether the writer means a "player of American football" or an "American player of football" and whether the writer means paintings that are "little celebrated" or "celebrated paintings" that are little.Compound modifiers can extend to three or more words, as inice-cream-flavoredcandy,and can be adverbial as well as adjectival (spine-tinglinglyfrightening). However, if the compound is a familiar one, it is usually unhyphenated. For example, some style guides prefer the constructionhigh school students,tohigh-schoolstudents.Although the expression is technically ambiguous ( "students of a high school" / "school students who are high" ), it would normally be formulated differently if other than the first meaning were intended. Noun–noun compound modifiers may also be written without a hyphen when no confusion is likely:grade point averageanddepartment store manager.

When a compound modifierfollowsthe term to which it applies, a hyphen is typically not used if the compound is a temporary compound. For example, "that gentleman is well respected", not "that gentleman is well-respected"; or "a patient-centered approach was used" but "the approach was patient centered."But permanent compounds, found as headwords in dictionaries, are treated as invariable, so if they are hyphenated in the cited dictionary, the hyphenation will be used in both attributive and predicative positions. For example, "A cost-effective method was used" and "The method was cost-effective" (cost-effectiveis a permanent compound that is hyphenated as a headword in various dictionaries). When one of the parts of the modifier is aproper nounor aproper adjective,there is no hyphen (e.g., "a South American actor" ).

When the first modifier in a compound is an adverb ending in-ly(e.g., "a poorly written novel" ), various style guides advise no hyphen.However, some do allow for this use. For example,The EconomistStyle Guideadvises: "Adverbs do not need to be linked to participles or adjectives by hyphens in simple constructions... Less common adverbs, including all those that end-ly,are less likely to need hyphens. "In the 19th century, it was common to hyphenate adverb–adjective modifiers with the adverb ending in-ly(e.g., "a craftily-constructed chair" ). However, this has become rare. For example,wholly owned subsidiaryandquickly moving vehicleare unambiguous, because the adverbs clearly modify the adjectives: "quickly" cannot modify "vehicle".

However, if an adverb can also function as an adjective, then a hyphen may be or should be used for clarity, depending on the style guide.For example, the phrasemore-importantreasons( "reasons that are more important" ) is distinguished frommore important reasons( "additional important reasons" ), wheremoreis an adjective. Similarly,more-beautifulscenery(with amass-noun) is distinct frommore beautiful scenery.(In contrast, the hyphen in "amore-importantreason "is not necessary, because the syntax cannot be misinterpreted.) A few short and common words—such aswell,ill,little,andmuch—attract special attention in this category.The hyphen in "well-[past_participled] noun", such as in "well-differentiated cells",might reasonably be judged superfluous (the syntax is unlikely to be misinterpreted), yet plenty of style guides call for it. Becauseearlyhas both adverbial and adjectival senses, its hyphenation can attract attention; some editors, due to comparison withadvanced-stage diseaseandadult-onset disease,like the parallelism ofearly-stage diseaseandearly-onset disease.Similarly, the hyphen inlittle-celebrated paintingsclarifies that one is not speaking of little paintings.

Hyphens are usually used to connect numbers and words in modifying phrases. Such is the case when used to describe dimensional measurements of weight, size, and time, under the rationale that, like other compound modifiers, they take hyphens in attributive position (before the modified noun),although not in predicative position (after the modified noun). This is applied whether numerals or words are used for the numbers. Thus28-year-oldwomanandtwenty-eight-year-oldwomanor32-footwingspanandthirty-two-footwingspan,butthe woman is 28 years oldanda wingspan of 32 feet.However, with symbols forSIunits (such asmorkg)—in contrast to thenamesof these units (such asmetreorkilogram)—the numerical value is always separated from it with a space:a 25 kg sphere.When the unit names are spelled out, this recommendation does not apply:a25-kilogramsphere,a roll of35-millimetrefilm.

In spelled-outfractions,hyphens are usually used when the fraction is used as an adjective but not when it is used as a noun: thustwo-thirdsmajorityandone-eighthportionbutI drank two thirds of the bottleorI kept three quarters of it for myself.However, at least one major style guidehyphenates spelled-out fractions invariably (whether adjective or noun).

In English,anen dash,–,sometimes replaces the hyphen in hyphenated compounds if either of its constituent parts is already hyphenated or contains a space (for example,San Francisco–area residents,hormone receptor–positive cells,cell cycle–related factors,andpublic-school–private-school rivalries).A commonly used alternative style is the hyphenated string (hormone-receptor-positive cells,cell-cycle-related factors). (For other aspects of en dash–versus–hyphen use, seeDash § En dash.)

Object–verbal-noun compounds

When an object is compounded with a verbal noun, such asegg-beater(a tool that beats eggs), the result is sometimes hyphenated. Some authors do this consistently, others only for disambiguation; in this case,egg-beater, egg beater,andeggbeaterare all common.

An example of an ambiguous phrase appears inthey stood near a group of alien lovers,which without a hyphen implies that they stood near a group of lovers who were aliens;they stood near a group of alien-loversclarifies that they stood near a group of people who loved aliens, as "alien" can be either an adjective or a noun. On the other hand, in the phrasea hungry pizza-lover,the hyphen will often be omitted (a hungry pizza lover), as "pizza" cannot be an adjective and the phrase is therefore unambiguous.

Similarly,a man-eating sharkis nearly the opposite ofa man eating shark;the first refers to a shark that eats people, and the second to a man who eatsshark meat.A government-monitoring programis a program that monitors the government, whereasa government monitoring programis a government program that monitors something else.

Personal names

See also:Spanish naming customs § Hyphenation,andPortuguese name § Hyphenation

Some married couples compose a newsurname(sometimes referred to as adouble-barrelled name) for their new family by combining their two surnames with a hyphen. Jane Doe and John Smith might become Jane and John Smith-Doe, or Doe-Smith, for instance. In some countries only the woman hyphenates her birth surname, appending her husband's surname.

With already-hyphenated names, some parts are typically dropped. For example, Aaron Johnson and Samantha Taylor-Wood becameAaron Taylor-JohnsonandSam Taylor-Johnson.Not all hyphenated surnames are the result of marriage. For exampleJulia Louis-Dreyfusis a descendant of Louis Lemlé Dreyfus whose son was Léopold Louis-Dreyfus.

Other compounds

Connecting hyphens are used in a large number of miscellaneous compounds, other than modifiers, such as inlily-of-the-valley,cock-a-hoop,clever-clever,tittle-tattleandorang-utan.Use is often dictated by convention rather than fixed rules, and hyphenation styles may vary between authors; for example,orang-utanis also written asorangutanororang utan,andlily-of-the-valleymay be hyphenated or not.

Suspended hyphens

Asuspended hyphen(also called asuspensive hyphenorhanging hyphen,or less commonly adanglingorfloating hyphen) may be used when a single base word is used with separate, consecutive, hyphenated words that are connected by "and", "or", or "to". For example,short-term and long-term plansmay be written asshort- and long-term plans.This usage is now common and specifically recommended in some style guides.Suspended hyphens are also used, though less commonly, when the base word comes first, such as in "investor-owned and-operated".Uses such as" applied and sociolinguistics "(instead of" applied linguistics and sociolinguistics ") are frowned upon; the Indiana University style guide uses this example and says" Do not 'take a shortcut' when the first expression is ordinarily open "(i.e., ordinarily two separate words).This is different, however, from instances where prefixes that are normally closed up (styled solidly) are used suspensively. For example,preoperative and postoperativebecomespre- and postoperative(notpre- and post-operative) when suspended. Some editors prefer to avoid suspending such pairs, choosing instead to write out both words in full.

Other uses

A hyphen may be used to connect groups of numbers, such as indates(see§ Usage in date notation),telephone numbersor sportsscores.

It can also be used to indicate a range of values, although many styles prefer an en dash (seeDash § En dash §§ Ranges of values).

It is sometimes used to hide letters in words (filleting for redaction or censoring), as in "G-d",although an en dash can be used as well (" G–d ").

It is often used inreduplication.

Due to their similar appearances, hyphens are sometimes mistakenly used where an en dash or em dash would be more appropriate.

Varied meanings

Some stark examples of semantic changes caused by the placement of hyphens to mark attributive phrases:

• Disease-causing poor nutritionis poor nutrition that causes disease.
  • Disease causing poor nutritionis a disease that causes poor nutrition.
• Ahard-working manis a man who works hard.
  • Ahard working manis a working man who is tough.
• Aman-eating sharkis a shark that eats humans.
  • Aman eating sharkis a man who is eating shark meat.
• Three-hundred-year-old treesare an indeterminate number of trees that are each 300 years old.
  • Three hundred-year-old treesare three trees that are each 100 years old.
  • Three hundred year-old treesare 300 trees that are each a year old.

Use in computing

Hyphen-minuses

Main article:Hyphen-minus

In theASCIIcharacter encoding, the hyphen (or minus) is character 45₁₀.AsUnicodeis identical to ASCII (the 1967 version) for all encodings up to 127₁₀,the number 45₁₀(2D₁₆) is also assigned to this character in Unicode, where it is denoted asU+002D-HYPHEN-MINUS.Unicode has, in addition, other encodings for minus and hyphen characters:U+2212−MINUS SIGNandU+2010‐HYPHEN,respectively. The unambiguous§ "Unicode hyphen"at U+2010 is generally inconvenient to enter on most keyboards and the glyphs for this hyphen and the hyphen-minus are identical in most fonts (Lucida Sans Unicodeis one of the few exceptions). Consequently, use of the hyphen-minus as the hyphen character is very common. Even theUnicode Standardregularly uses the hyphen-minus rather than the U+2010 hyphen.

The hyphen-minus has limited use in indicating subtraction; for example, compare4+3−2=5(minus) and4+3-2=5(hyphen-minus) — in most typefaces, theglyphfor hyphen-minus will not have the optimal width, thickness, or vertical position, whereas the minus character is typically designed so that it does. Nevertheless, in many spreadsheet and programming applications the hyphen-minus must be typed to indicate subtraction, as use of the Unicode minus sign will not be recognised.

The hyphen-minus is often used instead of dashes or minus signs in situations where the latter characters are unavailable (such astype-writtenor ASCII-only text), where they take effort to enter (viadialog boxesor multi-keykeyboard shortcuts), or when the writer is unaware of the distinction. Consequently, some writers use two or three hyphen-minuses (--or---) to represent an em dash.In the TeX typesetting languages, a single hyphen-minus (-) renders a hyphen, a single hyphen-minus in math mode ($-$) renders a minus sign, two hyphen-minuses (--) renders an en dash, and three hyphen-minuses (---) renders an em dash.

The hyphen-minus character is also often used when specifyingcommand-line options.The character is usually followed by one or more letters that indicate specific actions. Typically it is called a dash or switch in this context. Various implementations of thegetoptfunction to parse command-line options additionally allow the use of two hyphen-minus characters,--,to specify long option names that are more descriptive than their single-letter equivalents. Another use of hyphens is that employed by programs written withpipeliningin mind: a single hyphen may be recognizedin lieuof a filename, with the hyphen then serving as an indicator that astandard stream,instead of a file, is to be worked with.

Soft and hard hyphens

Further information:Soft hyphen

Although software (hyphenation algorithms) can often automatically make decisions on when to hyphenate a word at a line break, it is also sometimes useful for the user to be able to insert cues for those decisions (which are dynamic in the online medium, given that text can bereflowed). For this purpose, the concept of asoft hyphen(discretionary hyphen, optional hyphen) was introduced, allowing such manual specification of a place where a hyphenated break isallowedbut notforced.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 hyphenationmayoccur. 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 modulesof theCascading Style Sheets(CSS) standard provide 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 nonbreaking hyphen (seebelow). Confusingly, the term is sometimes limited to nonbreaking hyphens.

Nonbreaking hyphens

Theword segmentationrules of most text systems consider a hyphen to be aword boundaryand a valid point at which to break a line when flowing text. This is not always desirable, it could lead to ambiguity (e.g.retreatandre‑treatwould be indistinguishable with a line break afterre), it can split off an ending as in "n‑th "(thoughn^thor "nth "could be used), and it is inappropriate in some languages other than English (e.g., a line break at the hyphen inIrishan t‑athairorRomanians‑awould be undesirable). Thenon-breaking hyphen,nonbreaking hyphen,orno-break hyphenlooks identical to the regular hyphen, but word processors do not break words at it. Thenonbreaking spaceexists for similar reasons.

"Unicode hyphen"

Because the conventionalhyphen-minusmark on keyboards is ambiguous (it can be interpreted – sometimes unexpectedly – as a hyphen or a minus, depending on context), in addition theUnicode consortiumallocatedcodepointsfor an unambiguous minus and an unambiguous hyphen. The Unicode hyphen (U+2010‐HYPHEN) is seldom used. Even theUnicode Standarduses U+002D instead of U+2010 in its text.

Use in date notation

Further information:Date format by country

Use of hyphens to delineate the parts of a written date (rather than theslashesused conventionally inAnglophonecountries) is specified in theinternational standardISO 8601.Thus, for example, 1789-07-14 is the standard way of writing the date ofBastille Day.This standard has been transposed as European Standard EN 28601 and has been incorporated into various national typographic style guides (e.g.,DIN5008 in Germany). Now all official European Union (and many member state) documents use this style. This is also the typical date format used in large parts of Europe and Asia, although sometimes with other separators than the hyphen.

This method has gained influence within North America, as most common computerfile systemsmake the use of slashes infile namesdifficult or impossible.DOS,OS/2andWindowsuse/to introduce and separate switches toshellcommands, and on both Windows andUnix-likesystems slashes in a filename introduce subdirectories which may not be desirable. Besides encouraging use of dashes, the Y-M-D order and zero-padding of numbers less than 10 are also copied from ISO 8601 to make the filenames sort by date order.

Unicode

Unicode has multiple hyphen characters:

• U+002D-HYPHEN-MINUS,a character of multiple uses
• U+00ADSOFT HYPHEN(­)
• U+2010‐HYPHEN(‐, ‐)
• U+2011‑NON-BREAKING HYPHEN
• U+2E5D⹝OBLIQUE HYPHENfor medieval texts

And in non-Latin scripts:

• U+058A֊ARMENIAN HYPHEN
• U+05BE־HEBREW PUNCTUATION MAQAF
• U+1806᠆MONGOLIAN TODO SOFT HYPHEN
• U+1B60᭠BALINESE PAMENENG(used only as a line-breaking hyphen)
• U+2E17⸗DOUBLE OBLIQUE HYPHEN(used in ancient Near-Eastern linguistics and inblacklettertypefaces)
• U+30FB・KATAKANA MIDDLE DOT(has the Unicode property of "Hyphen" despite its name)
• U+FE63﹣SMALL HYPHEN-MINUS(compatibility character for a small hyphen-minus, used in East Asian typography)
• U+FF0D－FULLWIDTH HYPHEN-MINUS(compatibility character for a wide hyphen-minus, used in East Asian typography)
• U+FF65･HALFWIDTH KATAKANA MIDDLE DOT(compatibility character for a wide katakana middle dot, has the Unicode property of "Hyphen" despite its name)

Unicode distinguishes the hyphen from the generalinterpunct.The characters below do not have the Unicode property of "Hyphen" despite their names:

• U+1400᐀CANADIAN SYLLABICS HYPHEN
• U+2027‧HYPHENATION POINT
• U+2043⁃HYPHEN BULLET(⁃)
• U+2E1A⸚HYPHEN WITH DIAERESIS
• U+2E40⹀DOUBLE HYPHEN
• U+30A0゠KATAKANA-HIRAGANA DOUBLE HYPHEN
• U+10EAD𐺭YEZIDI HYPHENATION MARK
• U+10D6E𐵮GARAY HYPHEN

(Seeinterpunctandbullet (typography)for more round characters.)

See also

• De-hyphenation– Concept in international relations
• Double hyphen– Historic punctuation mark (⹀)
• French orthography § Hyphens– Spelling and punctuation of the French language
• Hyphen War– Naming dispute over the name for post-Communist Czechoslovakia
• Greek hyphen– Form of hyphen used in ancient Greek ( "Papyrological hyphen" )
• Enhypen– South Korean boy band, whose name refers to the hyphen

External links

• Wiktionary list of English phrases spelled with a hyphen
• Economist Style Guide—Hyphens
• Using hyphens in English; rules and recommendations
• Jukka Korpela,Soft hyphen (SHY)—a hard problem?(See also his article onword breaking, line breaks, and special characters (including hyphens) in HTML).
• Markus Kuhn,Unicode interpretation of SOFT HYPHEN breaks ISO 8859-1 compatibility.Unicode Technical Committee document L2/03-155R, June 2003.
• United States Government Printing Office Style Manual 20006. Compounding Rules]