About Dash Symbol

Why this site exists

Most dashes are missing from a standard keyboard, yet they show up everywhere: an em dash in an essay, an en dash in a date range, a minus sign in an equation, a box-drawing line in a README. Searching for one usually leads to a page that shows a character without saying what it is, which code point it uses or how to type it.

This site takes the opposite approach. Every symbol has a one-click copy tile, a category page with the whole family, and its own page with the official Unicode name, code point, HTML entity, CSS and JavaScript escapes, UTF-8 bytes and keyboard routes. The goal is simple: find the dash, understand it, copy it, move on.

What is on the site

94 dash symbols in 8 categories: hyphens, en dash, em dash, minus signs, math minus, script dashes, wavy dashes, lines & boxes. There are also two browser tools — a dash converter and a dash line generator — and four practical guides to typing, punctuation, examples and usage.

How the data is checked

The dataset is generated from a curated list of characters. Each one is validated as a single Unicode code point; its official name and block come from the Unicode Character Database; HTML values are resolved against the HTML named-character table; and the CSS, JavaScript, Python, UTF-8 and URL forms are computed from the code point rather than typed by hand.

That matters because dashes are easy to mix up. The hyphen (-), en dash (–), em dash (—) and minus sign (−) look similar at small sizes but have different names, code points and jobs. Generating the codes removes a whole class of typos, and a correction can be applied across every page at once.

The prose combines hand-written intros for the most-used symbols with descriptions generated from each character’s Unicode name, block and documented usage. Claims stay close to documented uses: script-specific hyphens, standard mathematical notation, box-drawing alignment and the HTML entities that are actually defined. Windows Alt codes are shown only for characters present in Windows-1252.

Privacy, accessibility and independence

The site is static. Copying runs in your browser, the tools run locally and there are no analytics or advertising scripts. You can read the details in the privacy policy. The copy buttons are real buttons with accessible names, the layout works at phone widths, and the site respects reduced-motion settings.

Dash Symbol is an independent reference. It is not affiliated with the Unicode Consortium or with any of the platforms whose fonts are mentioned. Unicode character names are factual data; the descriptions, guides and site design are original work.