Confusion with the usages of Hyphen,like “Social-media-and”
The whole sentence :"The handwritten communication has all but replaced by emails,text messages and social- media- and billing and other commercial transactions are increasingly conducted over the Internet." why here should use hyphens?Can I substitute "social- media- and" for" social medium and"?The whole sentence :"The handwritten communication has all but disapeared -replaced by emails,text messages and social- media- and billing and other commercial transactions are increasingly conducted over the Internet." why here should use hyphens?Can I substitute "social- media- and" for" social medium and"?

Question

Confusion with the usages of  Hyphen,like “Social-media-and”
The whole sentence  :"The handwritten communication has all but replaced by emails,text messages and social- media- and billing and other commercial transactions are increasingly conducted over the Internet." why here should use hyphens?Can I substitute "social- media- and" for" social medium and"?The whole sentence :"The handwritten communication has all but disapeared -replaced by emails,text messages and social- media- and billing and other commercial transactions are increasingly conducted over the Internet." why here should use hyphens?Can I substitute "social- media- and" for" social medium and"?

Answer

I also don't understand why they used hyphens in that way!  Normally we only use that "hanging hyphen" when different prefixes are being used with the same word.  Example:

"The doctor will visit you pre- and post-surgery."

Of course, we also use hyphens in other ways, but only in this way do we have the hyphen before a space.

Answer

I don't think that sentence was written by a native English speaker. The grammar is incorrect in a lot of places. To me, there is no reason they should have used hyphens here. My advice would be to ignore this as it is not correct English and should not be used as an example of correct grammar. Secondly, no, you absolutely cannot substitute "media" for "medium." The two words have very different meanings.

Answer

Okay, now that you have added the additional information it is clear.  These are NOT hyphens, they are dashes!  They should actually be written as a longer version of a hyphen ( — ).  A dash is used to put a phrase with extra information into a sentence.  Example:

She never goes to McDonalds—she's a vegetarian—preferring instead to cook at home.

Answer

You didn't give us the complete sentence.  "handwritten communication has all but DISAPPEARED - replaced by emails, text messages, and social-media -  and billing and other commercial transactions are increasingly conducted over the Internet.

"social-media" is a hyphenated compound word connected by a hyphen.
The other two " - " are dashes.