I don't know if this will work or not but on the theory the problem is a conflict with character encoding standards...
- Set TextEdit ➢ Preferences ➢ Open & Save ➢ Palin Text File Encoding ➢ Opening files: select Unicode (UTF 8)
- Set TextEdit ➢ Preferences ➢ Open & Save ➢ Palin Text File Encoding ➢ Saving files: select Unicode (UTF 8)
- Open the file and see if you are seeing hyphen, en dash, or em dash.
If it is a hyphen you should be goods to go, if not edit to change en dash and em dash to hyphens then save the file and use that.