I had always thought that the difference between a "dash" and a "hyphen" is
that the dash is a character (that is, will not break a character string), while the hyphen
hyphenates (that is, breaks at the end of a line if the character string following the hyphen is
too long to fit on the line). So, needing a non-breaking substitute for that horizontal bar on my
keyboard, I invoked:
Insert > Special Character
to get (what I would call) a dash.
LibreOffice has such mid-height horizontal-bar characters in three character
groups:
"General punctuation", characters:
U+2010 (HYPHEN)
U+2012 (FIGURE DASH)
U_2013 (EN DASH)
U+2014 (EM DASH)
U+2015 (HORIZONTAL BAR)
"Mathematical Operators", character:
U+2212 (MINUS SIGN)
"Box Drawing", character:
U+2500 (BOX DRAWINGS LIGHT HORIZONTAL)
The five characters of the "General Punctuation" group mostly seem to just
represent different widths of hyphen (despite three being called FIGURE DASH, EN DASH, EM
DASH), in that in a character string each will end a line of characters if the string
following is too long to fit. Only the HORIZONTAL BAR acts as a common character, such
that the string of which it is a member will not break there; but it is very long to be
used as a non-breaking hyphen.
The MINUS SIGN in the "Mathematical Operators" group has a special operation:
It will break at the end of a line, but will itself move to the next line, to stay with
the character following MINUS SIGN.
The BOX DRAWINGS LIGHT HORIZONTAL character acts like the HORIZONTAL BAR --
that is, as a true, non-breaking character -- but is also too long to be used
generally as a non-breaking hyphen.
Is there a clean way to make a non-breaking dash/hyphen?
-John
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