Alignment of lyric hyphens

[David Ward]

This is how Finale has spaced the hyphens for two versions of a vocal line on the same stave (depending on how long-breathed the singer might be = 60). It goes across three pages in the full score, with the hyphens of the two versions misaligned vertically on the middle page.

Does this misalignment look odd or not? If forum members do think it looks odd, does anyone have suggestions for how best to align the hyphens (Finale 26)?

[John Ruggero]

I do think that it looks odd and should be corrected. I've had similar situations with simultaneous continuation dashed lines for dynamics and tempo indications and was only able to correct them in Finale by using two dashed Smart Lines with the proper distance between the dashes.

[David Ward]

Thank you: I thought it looked a little odd.

A question I should perhaps now ask myself is how much effort ought I to put into changing a passing minor ‘engraving’ problem on one page of a 315 page full score from 2012? (This problem arises from a recent edit.)

There are a couple of other places where I have added equivalent alternatives to the vocal line, but in those cases there are word extensions rather than hyphens, and they seem to look OK. Is it too easy to get bogged down in things to which people using the score (other than copyists/engravers) are completely indifferent? Allowing the singers somewhere to breathe is what matters.

That said, yes, it does look odd (odd enough for me to have posted the question); but would I (should I) have noticed this in a printed score during the decades in which I wrote scores and parts only in manuscript (from ≤1950 to 2001)?

I get the feeling sometimes that my use of computer notation since 2001 (I still compose in manuscript) has possibly made me worry about details which I might be wiser to ignore as a composer (I am not a professional engraver/copyist), as these details may possibly distract me from more important things. Do people on this forum have any thoughts about this?

[benwiggy]

Similar little mis-alignments bother me, and one of the small improvements to Dorico recently was the ability to set the hyphen distances for a selected run of hyphens, and I've made much use of it.

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However, I'd quite understand if you left it, for the reasons you suggest.

That having been said, if you are going to change anything, I'd suggest hyphenating 'secrets' as 'se - crets'.

[David Ward]

That having been said, if you are going to change anything, I'd suggest hyphenating 'secrets' as 'se - crets'.

You are correct: thank you.