About Figure Dash
Figure Dash is the Unicode character ‒ at codepoint U+2012 in the General Punctuation block of the Basic Multilingual Plane (BMP).
Reference
The figure dash is a width rather than a meaning. It is drawn to match the digits of the typeface it is set in, so a separator inside a run of numbers keeps the column aligned; that is the whole specification. Unicode's evidence for its emptiness is in what is absent — the code chart carries no annotation and no cross-references at all, and PropList gives it the Dash property but not Hyphen, which both the plain hyphen and the non-breaking hyphen carry. It has no named HTML entity and no Windows-1252 slot. General category Pd, present since Unicode 1.1, line-break class HH.
Typical uses
- Separators inside phone numbers, part codes and account numbers set in tabular figures
- Numeric tables where a shorter hyphen would break the optical alignment
- Typesetting work where the separator must not read as a range
At a glance
- U+2012, General Punctuation; Unicode 1.1; general category Pd
- Dash property, but not Hyphen; line break class HH
- No annotation in the Unicode code chart — no notes, no cross-references
- No named HTML entity; no Windows-1252 slot
Historical Notes
Origins
The idea predates the codepoint: metal and photocomposition faces cut figures to a common width so numerals would stack in columns, and a separator matching that width belongs to the same discipline. What Unicode added was a place to put it.
Unicode
Unicode 1.1, General Punctuation. The entry is one of the barest in the block — NamesList.txt gives the name and nothing else. By contrast the em dash gets a usage note and two cross-references, and the horizontal bar gets an alias and a description of its intended use.
Why the silence matters
Unicode annotates a character when there is something to say about how it is used. Here the standard encodes a width and declines to say more, which is consistent with the character's job and also with how rarely anything reaches for it.
Developer Notes
| Unicode Codepoint | |
| Decimal | |
| UTF-8 (hex) | |
| UTF-16 (hex) | |
| HEX Entity | |
| HTML Entity | |
| CSS (\xxxx) | |
| JavaScript | |
| Python |
How to Use Figure Dash
To use the Figure Dash symbol (‒) in HTML, insert the
entity ‒ directly into your markup. The decimal entity ‒ works in any HTML-serialised document.
In CSS pseudo-elements use content: '\2012';.
In JavaScript and TypeScript the escape '\u2012' evaluates to ‒. In Python source, write '\u2012'.
The character encodes to E2 80 92 as UTF-8 bytes and 2012 as UTF-16 code units. Its decimal codepoint is 8210.
This is a text-based Unicode character. It will render in the current font on most platforms. If a font lacks this glyph, the browser may show a placeholder or fall back to a system font.
Things to know
- It carries the Dash property but not Hyphen, which is the machine-readable form of "this separates, it does not hyphenate".
- No named HTML entity. Numeric reference or the literal character.
- No Windows-1252 slot, so unlike the en dash and em dash it cannot survive a legacy eight-bit round trip.
- Its alignment benefit depends entirely on the font using tabular figures. In a face with proportional numerals there is nothing to align to and the character buys nothing.
- Do not use it for a range. That is the en dash's job, and a reader who knows the difference will read the range as a phone number.
In the Wild
Not once, across sixteen live pages on 4 August 2026: the home pages of the Guardian, BBC News, AP, the New York Times, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, Dagens Nyheter, NOS, Kathimerini and Protothema, MDN's CSS hyphens page, practicaltypography.com's dashes chapter, unicode.org's Unicode 17.0.0 page, a Norwegian weather forecast and two Wikipedia articles. Every one of them carried none.
That includes the pages where it would belong if it belonged anywhere. The Norwegian weather forecast sets its numbers with ASCII hyphens. MDN's hyphenation page carries 1,205 of them.
The character does appear on the two pages that are about dashes — English Wikipedia's "Dash" (12 occurrences) and Russian Wikipedia's "Тире" (23) — where it is being displayed rather than used. Pages change; this is what those showed on the day.
FAQ
What is a figure dash for?
Aligning a separator with the digits around it. It is a width, not a meaning.
Can I use it for a phone number?
You can, and in tabular figures it will align better than a hyphen. Most readers will not notice either way.
Is it the same as an en dash?
No. The en dash means "to" in a range; this one means nothing. They also differ in width in most faces.
Why is there no HTML entity?
The WHATWG entity table simply does not name it. Use the numeric reference.
Does it break lines like a hyphen?
Its line-break class is HH, the same as the plain hyphen, so a break after it is allowed.