whenever-i-type-a-word-there-is-a-dash-between-them.-how-do-I-stop-this?

Keyboards are so inexpensive these days that you may want to scrap
your keyboard and replace it. Fixing a flaky spacebar isn't really
worth the bother.

Another possible reason:  the Show/Hide Button on your toolbar might
be on the showing view, which displays non-printed marks like spaces!!
The Show/Hide Button is on your standard toolbar and looks like a
backward P with a line.  Click that and see if the space marks go
away!

Probably oyour dash is jammed.

Its definately not the "sho/hide" button judging by the way you typed here.

At high school i use to anoy friends by changing keyboards from US 101
to other languages. This swapped some of the characters around when
they typed depending on the layout. It sounds like the problem you
might be having.

It is most defenantly not something wrong with the hardware
(keyboard). if it was a broken button you would either get nothing or
a line of spaces it will be a software problem.

It is normaly easy to change back depending on you Operating System.
If you are in windows XP you and have the language button on your
"start bar" normally a blue box with EN in it you should be able to
change it in there. Other wise use your systems help and lookup
keyboard layout.

PS it can be fun to change these settings to annoy even the smartest of people.

if it was jammed, it would repeat all the time or at least between
every letter...its replacing spaces with dashes, possibly spilled
something on keyboard and got a funky short
most likely as before stated, your keyboard layout is set wrong in
windows and it is thinking the space bar is the dash