Wikipedia:Short horizontal line
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There is considerable controversy over the use of short horizontal lines in Wikipedia. This comes about from having three choices:
- an em-dash (—)
- an en-dash (–)
- a hyphen (-)
Looking at the source of this page, one key distinction can immediately be grasped: the only one of these characters with a dedicated key that any editor or user can find without instruction is the hyphen. This leads us to an obvious conclusion: if a Wikipedia editor is expected to be able to type it, a hyphen should be used. This includes titles and any other likely search terms.
When the issue is purely display formatting, people that care about the distinction between the different flavors of short horizontal lines should feel free to argue about it and generate WP:MOS pages about the topic, so long as they only involve other people that also care about the different flavors of short horizontal lines.
Note that underneath the "Save" button on the edit screen, there are clickable links that insert the em-dash, en-dash, and other special characters. Therefore the user can insert these characters without any typing whatsoever.