How to disable/eliminate lyrics extender lines?

Hi ALL,

When inputting lyrics, for me mostly chinese characters, sometimes the extender lines will be generated for longer notes. I don’t quite understand the rules about when they will appear though. I generally don’t want to have those extender lines in lyrics at all for chinese lyrics. But I can’t seem to find a way to disable/eliminate the extender lines, no matter in write mode or engrave mode. If some of you know the tricks to do it. Please share me your tips!

Extender lines like this that I want to remove:

Extender lines appear when the last (or only) syllable of a word extends to another notehead. It’s a visual reminder that ‘you’re not finished’ with that syllable.

Certainly, in the Western tradition, they are to be expected, and music looks ‘wrong’ or ‘incomplete’ without them.

I don’t think Dorico has an explicit setting to turn them off. Perhaps if you made the minimum length very long, they might not draw at all?

Hi Ben,

Thank you for the tip. That gave me some hope!
Where can I find the setting regarding the minimum length you mentioned to make it not draw at all? (if possible)

Thank you!

I’ve been exploring a similar thing in this situation:

It’s a 16 voice piece with extended melismas, and having long strings of hyphens, or long lyric extender lines if on a final syllable, may feel a bit distracting.

Later on I have a syllable under a tie (which is your situation):
image

Select the tied E
Press U to untie
Go into lyric mode, type the lyric, and Enter
Re-select the E
Press T to re-tie.
Re-start entering lyrics on the next note where you want a lyric.

In case it’s helpful, in my situation I also wanted a hyphen after the syllable, so I added a hard space and a hard hyphen. In lyric mode I typed (this is on Windows):
San
Shift-Alt spacebar
Ctrl-Alt hyphen
Enter

Engraving Options > Lyrics > Extension Lines. Try something like 200 spaces!

TBH, Chris, I find that really uncomfortable and much more distracting. Perhaps because I’m an engraving nerd – but I was singing in a choir recently with a piece like this, and when I pointed it out, everyone said “Oh, that’s why it feels a bit odd”. :rofl:

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My approach would be to un-tie the notes with U, then enter the lyrics, and then re-tie. You can skip a note without causing an extender line by pressing right-arrow instead of Space.

It is possible to un-tie a whole passage (or flow) at once. But of course re-tieing has to be done one at a time.

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