In the example below, I need a non-breaking hyphen to match the “true” hyphenated lyrics. But every hyphen I can find in the character map is thicker, as you can see. I’ve tried every one I can find, including U+2010 and +2011. I’m using Minion Pro.
Any suggestions as to how I can achieve a non-breaking hyphen that matches? Thanks.
UPDATE: I worked around it by adding the hyphens in Acrobat, but I’m still wondering why they aren’t displaying correctly in Dorico.
I don’t think you can effectively achieve this in Dorico, Dan, because the default hyphen character, which is the hyphen-minus (U+002D, more info here), is also interpreted by Dorico as the command to advance the popover, so you can’t type or paste it into the lyrics popover.
Dan, what happens if you change the hyphen character in Engraving Options to one of the alternatives? Can you still use the alternative in popver text?
Dorico always looks for the hyphen key on your keyboard when advancing the popover, so it doesn’t matter what character you have chosen in Engraving Options.
Yes, but at least they would look the same as the non-breaking hyphens, if you used the non-breaking hyphen character for … breaking hyphens.
Yes, but yuck…
This is a problem I talked about like two years ago… SOLVED — French poetry ...tirêt ? — - Dorico - Steinberg Forums
One solution was to copy-paste from an external editor, but I’m afraid that with the new behavior of paste in the lyrics popover, this is no longer possible. I was able to work with unicodes U+2011 and U+202f two days ago, but I admit I’m not using Minion Pro, and I have tweaked almost all my fonts so that they DO HAVE U+202f available.
I’m not trying to disgust or insult anyone here, but couldn’t you use a ‘Finale workaround’ and treat the word fragments in verses 2, 4 and 5 as single words with hyphens between their syllables, and then in Engrave Mode simply move the hyphen-space on the right as far as you need to in order to align the hyphens with the other voices? Not a very elegant solution but it does work. I’ve been doing exactly this in Finale for years when setting hymns.
Over two years past since this topic was posted, I wonder if there is any visually clean solution for this issue in a near future in Dorico. I think this is quite a universal problem in music notation, going beyond some language-related exceptions like the French “a-t-il” issue mentioned by @MarcLarcher. The original topic question by @dan_kreider, with multiple endings and a syllable break leading to an ending other than the first, is transversal to most of the vocal and choral music where these endings are present, which I believe is no small part of all the music being edited in music notation programs.
Having read some threads about this issue, I think I understand that this problem has no easy solution, since such a solution would be outside of the scope of Dorico programming. Nonetheless, I would like to offer a suggestion to the developers. What if there was a property where you would be able to add a hyphen either before or after a syllable? It would be a graphical solution: the hyphen would not be THE hyphen character, but rather a non-font related symbol similar to it.
I don’t want to seem smug about this: if my suggestion is ridiculous, or if it has been tried already, please do say so. I’m just disappointed that this common problem still has no good solution for it, and that I have to keep making scores with disproportionate dashes for hyphens.
I don’t understand why you seem to make a fuss about this. U+2211 works perfectly (IIRC the code)
Never been an issue since I have learned the solution. And I am happy to share that solution!
Marc, Unicode input doesn’t work for me and some other users. I can’t remember exactly if it’s a Windows thing, but I simply can’t input Unicode in Dorico.
I seem to remember from similar discussions about hyphens “in another place” that not all fonts provide a matching hyphen character in another Unicode slot.
“Pro” fonts, like Minion Pro, for instance, provide an identical hyphen at U+2010, but no glyph at U+2011.
Most “Std” OpenType fonts have no glyphs at 2010 through 2012.
There is a hyphen glyph at U+00AD, but it is kind of a special character, designed to be a placeholder for possible hyphenation.
There must be plenty of savvy people for whom that solution is easy to understand. I’m not one of them, though, and I bet there are plenty more who read your explanation and wish they understood it and managed to apply it.
I work in iOS: would you mind sharing a “Non-splitting hyphens for dummies” explanation?
Besides, if it is that easy, how difficult would it be for Dorico developers to add an “insert non-splitting hyphen” in a menu? (Again, I wonder if I’m being naïve and there’s more to it.)
Whether it would be difficult for the developers is beyond our field of view, but it’s definitely a good feature request.
Hi Tiago. I apologize for my answer was not helpful to you — and there is no point in answering if it’s not to help! I didn’t think about iOS users out there (although I sometimes use Dorico on the iPad). I’m afraid my solution doesn’t apply on iOS so don’t waste time on this (and I apologize again if I have made you waste your time). One thing that is useful for us users trying to help other users is to know which version of Dorico is used, and on which machine.
Your request is 100% valid, especially in an environment where no real solution exist yet. 
Thank you for your answer. In the meanwhile I spent some time searching around and I found an excellent video about typing special characters using Unicode while working on Mac. I hope it’ll help many others.
I managed to start using U+2011, and it is not perfect: in the example in the attached picture, you can see the difference between the hyphens in verses 2, 4 and 5, which Dorico automatically places, and the ones in verses 3 and 6 (verses that continue to a second ending of a repeat section), obtained with U+2011. Still, these look much better than the em-dash I used before (Option+hyphen), and they’ll do well for now, but I do hope there is a solution for this in a near future.
Thank you once again: I did manage to get help from you after all 
This is strange — it might be font-related. Have you tried the other codes proposed up there (by Benwiggy)? There might be a good match in those.
Another trick I use is small unbreakable spaces, (U202f) but those are seldom present in the fonts, and I modified some of them because it’s absolutely necessary in French typography to use them…
Here’s how it works for me:
Dan. This utility works for me on Win10.
It doesn’t need to install, Just run it and it will sit in your systray until you need it.
When you do need to enter a unicode, press alt + (on the numpad) and it pops up.
