literal text preformatted?
There is a little question mark on the right of the input box. click that for help. However, short answer is this forum uses a sort of markdown (like Grav itself) so code is entered with triple backticks, type your code, triple-backticks again:
yourcode
thanks. let’s try
here are some dashes
-```
but they dont come out
-```
this bit is also code
sorry didnt work. the above contained some dashes but they do not appear.
This is a bug/feature of muut forum which we are using. It’s a JS solution and does not have full markdown features. We just make do with it the best we can 
ok. thanks.