Hyphens and dashes are used differently. Hyphens are shorter and are used to divide words at line breaks or join word parts into single words. Dashes are longer and set off parts of sentences to emphasize them. A hyphen can change a word's meaning, like "habal-habal," while a dash is meaningless to a word. Rules for Cebuano writing specify using a hyphen for repeated words emphasizing repetition or similarity but not for root words, with some exceptions. Hyphens are also used to combine words replacing a missing term.