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As an aside: In german almost everyone says "plus-minus". a ± b is said "a plus-minus b", with plus-minus almost as a single word, while a + (-b) would be said as "a-plus minus-b* with a pause between plus and minus. This makes it fairly unambiguous. And when people speak english here, they simply do the same. – Polygnome.
The en dash – is Unicode U+2013 & can be typed on a Mac with an English keyboard layout using Opt/minus. The em dash — U+2014 can be typed using Opt/Shift/minus. And of course underscore _ on shift/minus. There's also figure dash ‒ two-em dash ⸺ three-em dash ⸻ horizontal bar ― an actual hyphen ‐ small hyphen-minus ﹣ fullwidth ...
In English, the sum of numbers is considered plural, and multiplication is singular. The reasons are somewhat odd, but do have some logic. For addition (and subtraction), the two numbers are thought of as two separate entities (5 and 7), whereas multiplication (and division) there is one entity that is being scaled (5 by 2, or vice versa).
The temperature will be minus 4 in the countryside, but plus 2 in the city. But if there is no comparison, you don't use "plus" Temperatures will be cool: 8 in Glasgow, 10 in Cardiff and 13 in London. The words "plus" and "minus" should be used to qualify numbers, and you should use "positive" or "negative" as general adjectives.
In mathematics you have a lot of symbols, and those symbols have names. For example, plus (+), minus (-), and of course equals (=). When stating equations with a true answer, we usually read from left to right and say those symbols by their name. So, for example: 1+1=2 would read as "one plus one equals two".
3. The inference of using 'plus', rather than just using 'and', is that it suggests an additional point or an afterthought rather than just joining two equal points together. For that reason, I would expect to see a comma as a pause in speech. He doesn't have the key to the storage room, plus he doesn't even know where it is.
2. '−' is an operator, and it is pronounced 'minus'. 'Positive' and 'negative' are properties of numbers, as are 'even' and 'odd'. −7 has the property of being an odd number, and the property of being a negative number, and has many other properties besides. −x may or may not be an odd number or a negative number.
For example the second one is read as one minus two equals minus one. The first one can be read similarly (one plus minus two equals minus one), but having something like 1 - (1 - 2) = 2, that's different, you need to say there's a bracket, and then that's one minus, open bracket, one minus two, close bracket, equals two.
6. You could say "A is equal to negative log X". Minus is generally refers to the operation of subtraction. Saying additive inverse is also perfectly correct, but rather cumbersome. Saying "A is equal to the opposite of the logarithm of X" is really imprecise, because opposite isn't a well-defined mathematical term.
this is not the letter 'x' in the alphabet, although many people use that when typing informally. Also this symbol ⋅ may be used in formal mathematical material e.g. 5 ⋅ 2. The asterisk * e.g. 5 * 2 is used mainly in computer code for convenience (as × is not easily typed), and may be found in informal material. division / e.g. 6 / 2 or ÷ ...