No, there are actually four different punctuation marks, all which look remarkably similar to the untrained eye.

1. We have the hyphen, which is most commonly used to create multi-part words, such as one-and-one-thousand.

2. We have the EN-DASH, which is most commonly used to denote spans of ranges. As an example, Barack Obama was President 2009–2017.

3. Then we have the recently maligned EM-DASH, which can be used in place of a variety of other punctuation marks, such as commas, colons, and parentheses. Very frequently, AI will use the em-dash as a way to separate two clauses and provide forward motion. AI uses it for the same reason that writers do: the em-dash is just a nicer punctuation mark compared to the colon.

4. Lastly, we have the minus sign, which is slightly different than the hyphen, though on most keyboards they're combined into the hyphen-minus.

By the by, they're called the em-dash and the en-dash because they match the length of an uppercase M or N, respectively.

I am so here for this lesson in punctuation and grammar right now. One of today’s lucky 10,000.