Have you ever wondered what the difference is between a hyphen and a dash? If you haven’t, I think you are clearly not nerdy enough! 
Regardless of whether or not you have wondered this very question or simply stumbled upon this page, put your punctuation anxieties to rest: your writing ninja is here to reveal all of the punctuation secrets.
Like with other punctuation types, there are a lot of little rules that govern hyphens and dashes, but no reasonable, non-nerdy person can be expected to remember all of them, so let me boil them down into a couple of simple, multifunctional ones for you.
The Hyphen
A hyphen does primarily two things:
1. It divides words when they split in the middle to go to the next line like the following.
I read icarusediting.com, which improved my writing so much that I was able to start writing professionally. Once I did, I was able to make nume- rous millions of dollars and buy a Ferrari.
2. It joins words together. For example:
Writing well requires clear-headed thinking.
Why is clear-headed hyphenated? Well, it’s because the two words are referring to one concept. In English we sometimes don’t have single words to describe what we want to say so we use two or more and connect them with hyphens. When the same two words are used to describe two ideas, they are not hyphenated.
Reading icarusediting.com gave me a clear head.
The Dash
Dashes are longer than hyphens and are used to indicate a pause or break in thought within a sentence. While parentheses can also indicate a break in thought (in select situations), the dash highlights the interjected thought while parentheses minimizes it.
For spring break—and it was way to short of one—we visited the Florida Keys.
You can use dashes after a list.
Tulsa, Stillwater, and Wichita—these were the cities in which I attended school.
There are just a few little rules that are actually important when using dashes:
1. Don’t use commas within the text that is set off by dashes. I don’t know why. After all, I’m just a ninja.
2. Don’t put space on either side of the dash.
3. Don’t overuse the dash. You want your use of a dash to be noticeable. If you overuse it, you’ll just look like you don’t know how to punctuate.
I hope this post helps you! Are you ready to tackle the hyphen and the dash in your own writing? Please post questions or thoughts in the comments below!
Best wishes from my desk to yours,
Jonae’