I teach technology and I am forever telling my students to do things using the least amount of key strokes and don't use the mouse unless you have to. I know I'm being picky however your solution uses 10 keystrokes/mouse clicks. If you do it manually it only takes 8, so until you have more than 5 hyphens it's more or just as efficient to do it manually. I know your premise was to not do it manually however it's just not efficient.

cheers