I didn't realize there was a fancy name for the dashes used to indicate a range in periods of time. They would be called En Dashes. Like 2008-09 school year. En Dashes are also used when combining open compounds, such as Utah-Nevada border.
Then there are Em Dashes in informal writing indicating a change of thought or interruption. Em Dashes may replace commas, semicolons, colons and parenthesis.
You can find more information here
http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/dashes-grammar.aspx
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I also have trouble with these. I didn't even know what they were used for unless it was talking about years. Now I know that there are other uses though!
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