When you’re writing by hand, a hyphen and a dash can look pretty similar, although the meanings differ. You might throw in a hyphen to link two well-known words or add a dash—for impact, of course.

Hyphenaters used to be fearless. Bad to the bone. Unflinching in the face of multi-word adjectives that required two or even three hyphens. An editor would see the terms “anti” and “social” and “media ...