‒
Figure Dash
- Unicode
- U+2012
- Category
- Punctuation
- HTML Entity
- ‒
- CSS
- \2012
The ‒ character is the figure dash: in any given font it is exactly as wide as a digit. That is its whole purpose — in phone numbers, part numbers and numeric tables an en dash – or a hyphen - has its own width, so a column of figures stops lining up vertically. The figure dash removes that. Ordinary prose does not need it; that is what – and — are for.
How to Type
- Windows
- Alt+8210 (numeric keypad)
- macOS
- Control+Command+Space, then search "figure dash"
- Linux
- Ctrl+Shift+U 2012
- HTML
- ‒
In Programming
In code it is just Unicode U+2012 with no special meaning: it is not the subtraction operator and is not allowed in identifiers. If it sneaks into a source file in place of a hyphen-minus the parser will reject it, while the eye can barely tell the two apart — a classic invisible syntax error.
Tags
figure dash
digit width dash
table dash
phone number dash
numeric alignment
dash types
punctuation
copy dash
u+2012