Let me clear up a common misconception. When most people say writing in code, what they really mean is writing using a cipher. A code is when a symbol, word, or phrase is used to stand for a different word, phrase, or sentence. A cipher is were each letter in a word is represented with a different letter or symbol.
The dash is a punctuation mark that is similar to a hyphen or minus sign, but differs from both of these symbols primarily in length and function.
Em dash is a printing/typesetting term, and it refers to a dash the width of the capital letter M. The shorter dash is similarly referred to as an en dash.. There is also the hyphen, which is usually smaller than the en dash. With some modern day fonts, there wouldn't be much difference betweeâ¦.