LaTeX has a dizzying number of options for different types of horizontal dash. The following are available:
- A single
-is a short dash appropriate for hyphenated compounds (like encoder-decoder). - A single dash in math mode,
$-$, is a longer minus sign - A double
--is a longer “en-dash” appropriate for numerical ranges (like 3-5). - A triple
---is a long “em-dash” appropriate for interjections (like this—no, I mean like that).
My plea to linguists is to actually use math mode and the minus sign when they are writing binary features. If you want to turn this into a simple macro, you can please the following in your preamble:
\newcommand{feature}[2]{\ensuremath{#1}\textsc{#2}}
and then write \feature{-}{Back} for nicely formatted feature specifications.
Note that this issue has an exact parallel in Word and other WYSIWYG setups: there the issue is as simple as selecting the Unicode minus sign (U+2212) from the inventory of special characters (or just googling “Unicode minus sign” and copying and pasting what you find).