U+2010 · Dash punctuation
HTML entity
‐
LaTeX
\mathhyphen
Hyphen Symbol ‐
‐ is hyphen. Write it in HTML as ‐ or paste the character directly. It was added in Unicode 1.1, and Unicode files it under Dash punctuation.
Codes & technical data
| Unicode | U+2010 | |
|---|---|---|
| HTML hex | ‐ | |
| HTML decimal | ‐ | |
| CSS | \2010 | |
| JavaScript | \u{2010} | |
| Python | \U00002010 | |
| Java / C# | \u2010 | |
| Rust | \u{2010} | |
| Swift | \u{2010} | |
| PHP | \u{2010} | |
| URL encoded | %E2%80%90 | |
| UTF-8 bytes | E2 80 90 | |
| UTF-16 bytes | 2010 | |
| Base64 | 4oCQ | |
| Decimal | 8208 | |
| HTML entity | ‐ | |
| LaTeX | \mathhyphen | |
| Category | Dash punctuation (Pd) | |
| Introduced | Unicode 1.1 | |
Will ‐ survive being pasted?
- Normalisation. Yes. ‐ is unchanged by NFKC, so it survives normalising systems intact.
- Legacy encodings. ‐ is Unicode-only — it has no Latin-1 equivalent, so a system stuck on an 8-bit encoding cannot represent it.
- Size. 3 bytes in UTF-8. Character-limited fields — SMS, bios, some form validators — usually count bytes, not characters.
Unicode cross-references
The standard points readers of ‐ at these characters — usually because they look alike, or because one is the correct choice where the other is often used by mistake.
Nearby in General Punctuation
The typographic marks that word processors quietly substitute for their ASCII lookalikes — real quotation marks, en and em dashes, the ellipsis. It also holds the invisible characters: zero-width spaces, joiners and directional marks that do work without drawing anything.
How to type ‐
| Windows | Type 2010 then press Alt+X |
|---|---|
| macOS | Press Ctrl+Cmd+Space, then search for “hyphen” |
| Linux | Press Ctrl+Shift+U, type 2010, press Enter |
| HTML | ‐ |
About Unicode’s Dash punctuation category
This is dash punctuation. Line-breaking algorithms are allowed to break a line after a dash, which is why a hyphen behaves differently from a minus sign even when they look almost identical.
Frequently asked questions
- How do I type the ‐ hyphen symbol?
- On Windows, type 2010 and press Alt+X. On Linux press Ctrl+Shift+U then 2010. On any system the quickest route is the copy button on this page.
- What is the code for ‐?
- Hyphen is U+2010, written in HTML as ‐ and in LaTeX as \mathhyphen. In UTF-8 it takes 3 bytes. The table above lists every escape format.
- What kind of character is ‐?
- Hyphen is filed under Dash punctuation in the General Punctuation block, and was introduced in Unicode 1.1. This is dash punctuation. Line-breaking algorithms are allowed to break a line after a dash, which is why a hyphen behaves differently from a minus sign even when they look almost identical.