Copy and paste the minus sign symbol − — click the button or any variant below
Click any symbol below to copy it to your clipboard instantly.
Last reviewed on October 1, 2026
The Minus Sign symbol (−) is one of the mathematical symbols characters in the AllSymbols catalog. It comes from one of the Unicode Mathematical Operators blocks (U+2200–U+22FF or U+2A00–U+2AFF), which collect the operators, relations, and quantifiers used in mathematics. These characters are designed to align visually with each other and with the rest of math text.
For inline math expressions in body text, captions, and chat, Unicode operators read more cleanly than ASCII substitutes. Use the proper minus sign (−) instead of the hyphen-minus, the multiplication sign (×) instead of the letter x, and the not-equal sign (≠) instead of the != digraph. For typeset math (proofs, papers), prefer a real math typesetting system — Unicode is for plain text.
In Unicode, Minus Sign sits at code point U+2212. Web pages reference it with the HTML numeric entity −; CSS rules reference it as a quoted hex escape (the four-digit code prefixed with a backslash); in JavaScript and most modern source-code contexts you can either paste the literal character or use a Unicode escape with the same hex digits.
Some math operators have ASCII look-alikes that mean different things: the bullet (•) is not the multiplication dot, the asterisk is not the multiplication sign, and the slash is not the division sign. When precision matters, copy the dedicated character.
If Minus Sign isn’t quite what you need, the Mathematical Symbols page lists every related character on the site — including Plus Sign and Integral. The related-symbols grid below also surfaces the closest sibling characters.
The keyboard “-” key types a hyphen-minus. It looks like a minus sign but is a different character, and so are the dashes. Pick the one that matches what you are writing:
| Char | Name | Unicode | Use it for |
|---|---|---|---|
| - | Hyphen-minus | U+002D | The keyboard key. Hyphenated words, code, formulas in Excel and programming languages. |
| − | Minus sign | U+2212 | Typeset math: 5 − 3, −12 °C. Same width as the plus sign. |
| ‐ | Hyphen | U+2010 | Typographically “true” hyphen; rarely needed. |
| ‑ | Non-breaking hyphen | U+2011 | Keeps phone numbers or compound words on one line. |
| ‒ | Figure dash | U+2012 | Digit-width dash for numbers in tables (555‒0100). |
| – | En dash | U+2013 | Ranges: 1990–2000, pages 10–20, Monday–Friday. |
| — | Em dash | U+2014 | A break in a sentence — like this. |
| ➖ | Heavy minus sign | U+2796 | Emoji minus for chats and social posts. |
Spreadsheets and programming languages only accept the hyphen-minus (-) as a subtraction operator. If you paste the true minus sign − into an Excel formula, you will get an error or text instead of a result.
Type 2212 then press Alt+X in Word; in other apps, copy − from this page and paste it. You can also copy − straight from this page — it pastes into any app.
Press Ctrl+Cmd+Space to open the Character Viewer, then search for the symbol by name.
The minus sign symbol is Unicode code point U+2212. In HTML, use − or the numeric reference −.