[Tex/LaTex] designated symbol for the negative sign in, say, -16

Question

I've been using -16 in my LaTeX code to write negative numbers.

But the problem with that, is in many displays and LaTeX rendering kits, it displays the - sign as extremely long and separated from all the other mathematical symbols (e.g. the 16).

Since I knew that LaTeX is an extremely thorough, powerful and complex language, I thought there definitely must be a way to pass this slightly annoying problem.

I don't really want my users looking at a mile-long negative sign.

Is there a way?

Example:

Answer 1

I am not a fan of typing numbers in the text in mathmode. It's fine if you use a complete font, but what if you decide to change the math font later? I prefer to use the textminus from the textcomp package. If your editor is unicode capable you can enter the proper minus symbol directly.

Edit: siunitx is able to handle numbers correctly as well.

Edit 2: To respond a bit more to the question asked, there is no typographical difference between a 'minus' and 'negative' sign. The difference is the kerning: With $-12$ the sign is close to the number, with $10-12$ the minus has appropriate kerning between the numbers. In short, there should be no need to resize the minus sign for negative numbers as a good font should have a minus sign so that its length blends in well with text.

\documentclass{scrartcl}

\usepackage{textcomp}
\usepackage{mathpazo}
\usepackage{eulervm}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}

\DeclareUnicodeCharacter{2212}{\textminus}% requires a unicode capable editor

\usepackage{siunitx}
\sisetup{
   detect-mode,
   detect-family,
   detect-inline-family=math,
}

\begin{document}

\noindent
Number \textminus10 (textcomp minus)\\
Number −10 (unicode minus)\\% requires a unicode capable editor
Number -10 (normal text minus)\\
Number $-10$ (all math mode)\\    
\vspace{1ex}
\noindent
Number \num{-16} (siunitx textmode. No bug, my bad. Sorry Joseph)\\
Number $\num{-16}$ (siunitx mathmode)

\end{document}