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In Wiley's redaction, they edited our hyphens in our article title, so we have now two different hyphens there:

Extension of Pradel capture–recapture survival‐recruitment model accounting for transients

The first hyphen is probably n-dash, the second one is hyphen. The term "capture–recapture" is an established one, that has been used a lot in literature. Whereas the term "survival‐recruitment" was created by us to signify that the model is for calculating both survival and recruitment.

So, is there a valid reason for two different hyphens in these multi-word compounds? Are there some guidelines or habits in English that could lead to these two different hyphens?

PS: Wiley can make mistakes; they made a lot of corrections which were not grammatically ok..

EDIT: I got an interesting answer from ChatGPT 4.0, posted it as an answer.

PS2: got an interesting answer here:

south-west–north-east: Hyphens are used within each direction, and en-dashes are used between directions.

Tomas
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  • This question is about a similar issue, but doesn't have any answers. Most likely it's incorrect application of style rules. – Stuart F Dec 08 '23 at 14:29
  • You are misusing the word redaction. – Lambie Dec 08 '23 at 16:22
  • Why don't you ask the copyeditor directly for his/her reasons? That would seem to be more useful for your purposes rather than asking the people on this site to guess what the copyeditor's reasons may have been. – jsw29 Dec 08 '23 at 16:26
  • Didn't know terms could hold internal n-dashes instead of hyphens. I demand a retraction. – Yosef Baskin Dec 08 '23 at 16:33
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    I am voting to reopen, as the duplicates do not address why capture–recapture would be styled with an en dash. It’s not because it sits in front of another hyphenated term. I can answer why it is styled that way (and whether or not it should be) if the question is reopened. – Tinfoil Hat Dec 09 '23 at 14:58
  • The punctuation 'rules' hereabouts are hardly standardised, and any attempt to further complicate the << 'use of hyphen + en-dash' advice (see Tin Hat's CMOS quote) for compound adjectives when one of their elements itself consists of an open compound >> should in my opinion be hastily abandoned. – Edwin Ashworth Dec 10 '23 at 15:12

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If "the model is for calculating both survival and recruitment", 'survival-recruitment' is not a compound.
You could write it as "survival/recruitment", with the slash as a substitute for the conjunction 'or' (both inclusive and exclusive).

Joachim
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