This is an old post, but I would like to do something. This will help other people why a dash (-) appears.
This is because there is empty space inside the tag. For instance:
<a href="#"> <i>test</i> </a>
If you set your line as follows: <a href="#"><i>test</i></a> dash / underline disappears, but some tools may still format your code and they will add a space . So using css mentioned in a previous post will fix the problem.
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