That's actually not very interesting. He was talking about hyphens, but calling them dashes, because normal people do that unless they are talking about typography.
No. "normal people" call them hyphens. I think it is a mainly USian curiosity to call hyphens dashes. The Rest of the World calls hyphens, well, hyphens. It's only the US that call them dashes. I've no idea why that is.
people outside the US call them dashes as well, though perhaps not with the same frequency. ... --- ... is not 'dot dot dot hyphen hyphen hyphen dot dot dot', for example
