A hyphen joins words: three-hour tour, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Fahey-Vornberg, or Jay-Z.
An en dash indicates a range: June–August or 7–9 p.m.
An em dash is used for three different purposes:
- As a parenthetical: He smiled—no grinned—at her!
- As an inverted colon: Beer & brats—a great breakfast.
- To indicate interruption: I lo—no, I’ll say it later.
A minus is used for math. We all know that one.
Single & double primes are used for things like navigation: 39°6'58"N & 93°11'52"W.
| Symbol Name | Symbol | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Hyphen | - | Fahey-Vornberg |
| En Dash | – | May 10–14, 2009 |
| Em Dash | — | He smiled—no, grinned—at her. |
| Minus | − | 10−3=7 |
So what do you use in your HTML to insert these characters?
| Character | Unicode Name | Numeric Character Reference | Named Character Reference |
|---|---|---|---|
| ′ | Prime | ′ |
′ |
| ″ | Double Prime | ″ |
″ |
| ' | Apostrophe | ' |
' |
| " | Quotation Mark | " |
" |
| ‘ | Left Single Quotation Mark | ‘ |
‘ |
| ’ | Right Single Quotation Mark | ’ |
’ |
| “ | Opening Double Quotation Mark | “ |
“ |
| ” | Closing Double Quotation Mark | ” |
” |