A reader asked about the difference between a minus symbol and an N-dash (thanks Tem). I had to do a bit of homework on this.
Unicode (the standard for electronically encoding text information) has separate codes for the minus sign, hyphen and N-dash.
Below you can compare…
| Symbol | ||
| hyphen minus sign N-dash M-dash |
– − – — |
f-f f−f f–f f—f |
To look closely at the differences, use ‘Ctrl’ and spin your mouse wheel to zoom in/out on most browsers, or just zoom in with your fingers on a tablet.
If you want to insert a ‘proper’ minus sign in Word, here’s how:
Go to ‘insert’ / ‘symbol’ / ‘more symbols’. This opens a tool showing all of the characters for every font on your computer. It would be very hard to pick the right symbol from the map, but in the field ‘character code’ you can enter a code that finds the right one…
| Symbol | Unicode | ||
| hyphen minus sign N-dash M-dash |
– − – — |
f-f f−f f–f f—f |
002D or 2010 2212 2013 2014 |
Only an obsessive typography freak could tell whether you used a minus sign or an N-dash. Here’s how: The minus sign is slightly thinner and has a sliver of space between itself and the adjacent characters.
Please note: These characters are rendered very differently on different devices. I’ve viewed this page on some tablets where, in the table above, the symbols all look the same. Very disappointing. On my PC in Chrome or Firefox, the minus sign looks a wee bit shorter than the n-dash. But in the WordPress editor the minus sign looks 50% longer than the n-dash! This probably illustrates software inconsistencies – which might suggest it is pointless to obsess about the pixel-level differences between the various options for Unicode minus signs.
Can I use a hyphen as a minus sign?
Sure, but it isn’t ideal. Note that the hyphen is a bit lower-down on the line of text than the minus sign and the dashes, plus it is very short – it looks too low and too small when used in mathematical expressions.
More information about dashes:
When to use the hyphen, dash, n-dash and m-dash
Insert an n-dash or m-dash on a web page or blog