Hyphen

The hyphen is a punctuation mark used to join words and to separate syllables of a single word. The use of hyphens is called hyphenation. A hyphen looks like this: -. Hyphens have many uses in writing.
"Son-in-law" is an example of a hyphenated word. The hyphen is sometimes confused with dashes which are longer and have different uses, or with the minus sign. The hyphen is the shortest of these signs.