Hyphen

A short horizontal punctuation mark used to join words or word parts, divide a word at a line break, or clarify word structure.

Compound modifier: A multiword expression that jointly modifies a noun, often hyphenated before that noun. Hyphens can show that two words form one modifier, as in “well-known author.”
Punctuation: A system of written marks that organizes text and signals structure or pauses. The hyphen is a punctuation mark with unusually strong ties to word spelling.
Greek scriptio continua: A writing practice in which words run together without spaces between them. It represents an earlier way of organizing text before word separators became common.
Em dash: A long dash used to mark breaks, interruptions, or parenthetical material in a sentence. Its sentence-level role differs from the hyphen’s word-level role.
Line breaking: The division of text into lines, including decisions about where words may split. A hyphen can mark a word divided at a line ending.
Morpheme: The smallest linguistic unit that carries meaning or grammatical function. Hyphens can expose boundaries between meaningful word parts.
Carolingian minuscule: A standardized medieval handwriting style that helped establish spaces between words. Its wider use of word spacing changed the context in which joining marks were needed.
Nonbreaking hyphen: A hyphen character that prevents a line break at its position. It looks like a hyphen but controls whether the joined text can split across lines.
Syllabification: The division of a word into syllables, based on its sound structure. Syllable boundaries can inform line-break hyphenation, though they do not determine every valid break.
Compound word: A word formed by combining two or more lexical elements. Some compounds are written with a hyphen between their components.

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English punctuationCompared with: It is often confused with longer dashes, though its functions and shape differ.