Is it necessary to use a dash to indicate a suspension in a figured bass?
In the ABRSM theory exams, a 4-3, 7-6 or 9-8 suspension always has a dash between the two numbers in the figured bass. I have not found this to be the case in analyses that I have looked at. So is the dash just to make suspensions obvious to students or is it common practice to figure suspensions this way?
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Is it necessary to use a dash to indicate a suspension in a figured bass?
No. It is both unnecessary and unusual.
As Albrecht Hügli notes, a dash is used when the bass note changes but the harmony (or perhaps one voice in the harmony) does not. But that's not what's happening here. In this case, an upper voice is moving, while the bass is not.
The dashes may perhaps be intended to underscore that the motion in the upper voice does not represent a change in the harmony, since in both cases the voice is leaping from one chord tone to another. But this notation is not commonly seen in figured bass writing from the baroque period. A suspension is normally indicated by placing the figures for the moving voice in sequence horizontally. In other words, the hyphen appearing between the seven and the six in your example would be absent.
...is it common practice to figure suspensions this way?
It seems no. The line after a figure means hold the initial chord while the bass changes.
I had to look this up so I can't claim scholarly knowledge.
Resources to compare against...
J.G. Albrechtsberger's collected writings on thorough-bass, harmony, and composition
Robert Kelley, Ph.D., How to Realize a Figured Bass: An Introduction to Thoroughbass
George Frideric Handel, David Ledbetter, Continuo playing according to Handel: his figured bass exercises, Oxford University Press, 1990
or is it common practice to figure suspensions this way?
I can’t tell you whether it was common practice for that period. But the explanation of musescore shows that it’s possible to notate this today.
The dash assigns that the upper voices or the bass don't change.
A horizontal line indicates a changes of voicing or a change of harmony. This may take place over a stable or an active bass. Note that in this situation it is customary not to abbreviate a five-three chord.
musescore.org/sites/musescore.org/files/Figured-Bass-Notation.pdf
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