Dashes
LaTeX provides for three sizes of dashes which are indicated by typing one, two, or three consecutive dashes in the text.
a hyphenation dash, as in X-ray, is a single dash
a dash between limits, as in 1--2, is a double dash
a parenthetical punctuation --- such as this --- is a triple dash
Note that this applies to paragraph mode. In math mode each
-
is interpreted as a minus sign.
Related topics:
Spaces and boxes
Modes