Dynamics in brackets – typography

Hi!

If dynamics (which are italic) are set in brackets (doesn’t matter if this is done by the properties panel or by typing in the brackets in the shift-d popover, the brackets are non-italic by default.


Is there any possibility to get italic brackets as well – without having a workaround with a new style?

Thanks in advance! :slight_smile:

The Brackets use the Dynamics Text Font font Style. By default, Dorico uses (Academico) in an Italic style.

Thanks! Great help! :slight_smile:

It is typographic orthodoxy to use roman brackets in this case but obviously your need to avoid the collision takes precedence.

Typographic orthodoxy to use roman brackets around dynamics symbols??? :open_mouth: Dynamics symbols are clearly based on Modern-style Italic types. Perpendicular brackets are always going to look odd around oblique letterforms.

See Gould, p.107, for examples of bracketed dynamics. This is absolutely standard typographic practice.

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Nope. Roman (i.e. upright) brackets are always used in delimiting italic text unless there’s a particular reason not to. The same applies to things like quotation marks. Generally, such delimiters should only be italicized if they’re part of a passage in italics, not surrounding it.

You wouldn’t italicize square brackets in a critical edition.

I’d give chapter and verse but it’s the middle of the night…

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I would around italic text. Otherwise they just look mismatching and weird.

Interestingly, although the Bravura glyphs are perpendicular, they are not used, in favour of the Dynamic Text Font, which is typically italic.

To be blunt, I wouldn’t expect any reputable publisher to accept this. If I found some square brackets were upright and some were slanted, I’d assume that the two had different functions and would be reaching for the critical commentary.

I would actually be puzzled if I came across the (mf) example you give in your Scoring Notes article. Using upright brackets (round or square) would be much more usual editorial practice.

You may think italic text within upright brackets looks ‘weird’ and ‘odd’ but a more common debate amongst typographers is whether or not brackets (and some other glyphs) should ever be slanted. Robert Bringhurst famously says not:
Parentheses and brackets are not letters, and it makes little sense to speak of them as roman or italic. There are vertical parentheses and sloped ones, and the parentheses on italic fonts are almost always sloped, but vertical parentheses are generally to be preferred. That means they must come from the roman font, and may need extra spacing when used with italic letterforms.

I would suggest retaining the upright brackets if possible and adding some space using the dynamic’s Prefix property.

Then Dorico will need to change its current practice of using the Dynamics Text font style for the brackets, assuming you agree that they should, or may, be italicised.

I just find it gives a more compact appearance, which can be useful in tightly spaced music. The extra space to accommodate uprights can make things very wide.

I was thumbing through Elements of Typography, but couldn’t find anything relevant. However, I do think that music has many typographic exceptions when compared to a page of text. Similarly Edward Tufte says that staff lines should be very thin, because he’s thinking of graphs.

The brackets should almost always be upright so yes, this should be handled differently in Dorico.

I was quoting from page 85 of Version 3.0 (I think the passage is the same in Version 2.4). I certainly don’t agree with everything Bringhurst says but he’s generally right in this case.

In writing, we usually mark a parenthesis with brackets or dashes; in music we just use brackets. In typesetting, I might very occasionally use a slanted variant of a bracket for clarity (perhaps a parenthesis within a quote in italics) but the default would always be a standard, upright bracket. In music, unless one’s using upright and slanted brackets to mean different things, there’s no reason to use anything but the standard symbol. If I see mf, I take it as an instruction; if I see (mf), I would think it means still mf or represents an editorial addition (depending on the context). If I saw your (mf), I wouldn’t know what to think (it looks like it should indicate an exception to an exception). It’s certainly not something I’ve seen very often.

Optimal clarity is surely what matters.

Ironic that this is rendered poorly!

I suppose the alternative is Baerenreiter’s ‘roman’ dynamics… ! :confused:
Screenshot 6.png

It’s fine here (four different browsers and Windows 10).

Not rendered well on your beloved Macs? Now that’s ironic.

Anyway, must get on…

I just came upon this thread. Here is an example of italicized parentheses around dynamic markings in a recent Wiener Urtext edition. It is what I have seen in most editions, what I do in my own editions, and it would hurt my eyes to do otherwise.
Italicized dynamics

I don’t know how the OP got that example in post #1, but when I enter parentheses with dynamics they do display in italic.

The dynamic parentheses use the Dynamic Text Font style, so will default to whatever you set there.
parens

Yes, Dorico does the correct thing. I was responding to the argument earlier in the thread that it is typographically incorrect to use italicized parentheses around dynamics.

I found this old thread because I was researching the way Dorico places parentheses around various objects, because I have an issue when I place parentheses around Maestro dynamics:
parentheses

I think this issue comes about because I had to add “padding” around the Maestro dynamic sign in the music symbol editor to get the dynamic lined up properly against the note, and the parentheses are responding to the blank space that I’ve added before the dynamic. It appears that I will need to place parentheses and square brackets around dynamics by using the Text Tool.

Here’s what I get by default if I just switch the Music Font to Finale Maestro:

What exactly do you not like about the Maestro dynamic positioning here? There might be a better way to fix it other than editing in Music Symbols.