Re: Disappearing hyphens (endashes) in lyrics

[David Rogers]

Mats Bengtsson <address@hidden> writes:

> Christ van Willegen <cvwillegen <at> gmail.com> writes: 
>
> >  On Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 03:26, David Rogers <davidandrewrogers 
> > <at> gmail.com> 
> wrote: 
> > > This will alert the singer, at the time they need to know, 
> > > "this is only half of the word". In your proposal, if another 
> > > voice (or the accompaniment) has a lot of notes, the dash 
> > > could end up "in the middle of nowhere", even potentially on 
> > > the next line. 
> >  It does not indicate 'this is half a word' in his case, but 
> > 'this is a parenthesis', so i would lessen the confusion (I 
> > think!).

I did forget about the kind of dash, but my point is still the 
same.

I don't agree with giving the dash to an invisible note, because 
of the potential it creates for the dash to be in the middle of 
nowhere, where the singer might miss it or might read it as a 
printing error. If "evenly spaced between the syllables" turns out 
to mean "two staffs of the piano's sixteenth notes later" or 
"sixty millimetres away from the nearest word" then the meaning is 
lost.

Attach it to the syllable, adding two, three, even six spaces if 
you want. Or attach it to the following syllable and right-align 
that syllable, if that works better. But in the context of lyrics, 
punctuation IMO must attach to the words (even if with the 
addition of some spaces) or else it will be easily ignored or 
misinterpreted. "Lonely" punctuation has a high likelihood of 
being interpreted as part of a stray dynamic spanner line, a 
misplaced tenuto or staccato, or as random garbage.

--
David