Q. In a recent Q&A the hyphens look like en dashes to me. Are they, and if they are, why?
A. You must be referring to the main entries for “fund-raiser” and “fund-raising” in the screenshot from the first printing of the 11th edition of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. Those do look like en dashes, but they are presented that way for maximum legibility. For one thing, regular hyphens might be confused with the centered dots that indicate places where a hyphen may be added to divide a word at the end of a line. In other words, “fund–rais·er” is easier to interpret at a glance as a hyphenated term than “fund-rais·er” would be. For what it’s worth, at Merriam-Webster.com, the hyphens in main entries are really hyphens. For the entry words online, however, M-W uses the font Playfair Display, which has the advantage of featuring generously long hyphens. This matters a bit less in the online version of the dictionary, where suggested word division is shown on a separate line, below the main entry (and in a different font that happens to feature shorter hyphens). But as this screenshot from the definition for “self-conscious” shows, the extra-long hyphen is strikingly legible:
