In the following example, the voice column was originally aligned to the left side of the upper notehead.
But in this scenario, I always prefer to move both noteheads to the left to align the voice column to the lower note, as shown. I really think it makes the spacing of the lower voice much more pleasing, less squished.
Would you consider adding an engraving option for this instance? It also matches the lower staff spacing better:
Actually, the ideal would be the ability to adjust the X-offset for this sort of 2-voice 2nd interval, if a partial adjustment would be preferred. I actually like to align the voice column to the middle of the upper notehead (sort of a middle ground).
Thanks for considering!
Can you really support this with examples from the literature?
I really couldn’t say. Well, likely in hymnals, but hymnals are of such variable engraving quality that they might not count.
I see the third picture in my OP as a trade-off between voice alignments. I manually adjust this every time it comes up, which is often enough that I figured it’s worth a shot to ask.
I found usecases (in piano literature) where the second voice (lower staff) is aligned with the first voice (upper staff), as in a Henle edition of Bach’s The Art of Fugue (BWV 1080).
I attach some examples from the last counterpoint (n. 14, e.g. page 75 of the preview), measures 50–51, 55–56 and 58 (there are lots of more examples of this alignment behaviour in the score, and some others where it is not applied—maybe depending on other voices context).
