How do I enter a hyphen (not a minus symbol) on Windows 7?

Solution 1:

Those are probably two completely unrelated issues.

1. It sounds like the problem in Word is your font. Most (all?) fonts do not support all Unicode characters.

   The fact that copying and pasting results in the right character shows that Word "understood" the key combination, but cannot display the character as it should. Try using another font.

2. The problem in the browser is bad Unicode support.

   Try setting the registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Input Method\EnableHexNumpad to 1 and using the hexadecimal keyboard combination instead, i.e., Alt + (+, 2, 0, 1, 0). Note that you have to press + on the numpad as well.

Solution 2:

In WordPad and in MS Word, you can type U+2010 and then Alt X. This replaces U+2010 by the corresponding Unicode character, HYPHEN. The part U+ can be omitted if the immediately preceding character is not a hexadecimal digit (0–9, A–F) or the letter X.

In other software, it’s more complicated; see the Fileformat.info page How to enter Unicode characters in Microsoft Windows.

Beware that only a limited set of fonts contains HYPHEN, and when a program is forced to change font, HYPHEN from a different font may be unsuitable for use with your basic font. So if you wish to use HYPHEN, select a copy text font that contains it.