Actually, that option *does* affect single hyphens, but only when they are
surrounded by spaces. The reason for this is that in the U.K. it is
customary to use spaceen dashspace the way we use an (unspaced) em
dash in the U.S. In the past I've experimented with various combinations of
hyphens and spaces to see which ones trigger the conversion, and I don't
ever remember all the results, but they're interesting. The most common user
error is thinking the conversion *hasn't* worked because it doesn't fire
until you type a space or punctuation after the word following the dash.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

"Tony Jollans" My Forename at My Surname dot com wrote in message
...
In my Word 2000, the option is "Symbol characters (--) with symbols (-)"
so
typing a single hyphen is not affected - and if I type a single hyphen I
get
a single hyphen.

Do you perhaps have an autocorrect which does this? I don't, and don't
recall removing one (so don't think it comes with one) but it has been
installed a long time so I could have done it and forgotten.

--
Enjoy,
Tony


"Greg" wrote in message
oups.com...
Tony,

It must be more than that. Using Word2000 here, I can check or uncheck
that option in both places and the result of pressing the - key in a
Word document is an en-dash. I can confirm that by performing a Find
operation with - in the find what field (Nothing found). If I put ^=
in the find what field then the find operation finds the - typed with
the AutoCorrect options checked or unchecked. I am stumped.