Lyrics: hyphen beginning of stave

When I have a hyphenated word in the lyrics on line break, I get a hyphen at the beginning of the next stave. I never saw something like this. Normally there is a hyphen only at the end of the stave, not at the beginning. I can’t find an option to change this. I attach two screenshots: one with the wrong hyphen Dorico puts, the other showing that Sibelius handles the situation correctly.


According to Elaine Gould in “Behind Bars” there should be a hyphen at the end of the stave and at the beginning of the following stave (she says: “obwohl er in manchen Ausgaben fehlt” in the German version).
I’m really thankfull that Dorico does this by default. I always had to fake this hyphen at the beginning of the new stave in Finale, which is really difficult to do.

Thomas

Yes, I’m afraid we don’t have an option for this because, as far as I know, it’s unambiguously correct to always show a hyphen at the start of a new system.

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It would be nice if the option to hide hyphens at the start of systems were present. My publishing house excludes these.

And sometimes, they hit the text. I would love that this could not happen (and this is worth also with hyphens at the end of a system).

I found a workaround.

If it’s on a right hand page then set a much higher number for the start value and don’t bother overriding the end value, like so:

kuppercue, it would be interesting to know more about your publisher’s house style. Which publisher(s) prefer this appearance? (As a singer myself I have always preferred to see the hyphen at the start of the system, but I know that other opinions are of course available!)

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Another workaround is to enter the syllables as separate words. After final layout is done of course.

Craig, then you lose the hyphen at the end of the previous line, don’t you?

Darn, you’re right. :blush:

Hi Daniel,

I’ve just come across this issue - apologies if I’m late to the discussion.

I’ve taken a quick look through some of the books I have here and while I’ve found many examples of hyphenated lyrics crossing system breaks, I haven’t yet found any examples of there are are hyphens at both the end and the start of those systems.

Rodgers and Hart - A Music Anthology (Hal Leonard)
Showboat - Vocal Score (Wise Publications) - aside: you won’t get a more famous line as an example - “he jes keeps roll-in’ a-lon”.
Kiss Me Kate - Vocal Score (Faber Music)
Chicago - Vocal Selection (Faber Music). The last one’s very unusual, it not not only crosses to a new stave, you also have to turn the page. No hyphen on the new page.

You’ll see from the selection this is all from a particular period and I have a feeling this may be a classical vs modern approach. If you’d like, I can scan examples and email them to you.

I’ll use Leo’s fix as I rather not have the hyphen at the start.

Rodgers and Hart - A Music Anthology (Hal Leonard)
Showboat - Vocal Score (Wise Publications) - aside: you won’t get a more famous line as an example - “he jes keeps roll-in’ a-lon”.
Kiss Me Kate - Vocal Score (Faber Music)
Chicago - Vocal Selection (Faber Music). The last one’s very unusual, it not not only crosses to a new stave, you also have to turn the page. No hyphen on the new page.

The same with me here. Lots of non classical publishers don’t care about the hyphen at the start of the system. So an “on/off” option would be great.
It’s a thumbs up for “Auerbach”.

In most classical repertoire from Baroque oratorio to the German lied, the publishers generally don’t put hyphens at the beginning of a system, either in modern editions or in early ones. Just to be sure I checked my Bärenreiter, Wiener Urtext and Peters editions of vocal repertoire from different periods and genres and I didn’t find any of these hyphens. The French editions are an exception to this. In any case we really should have the choice. It’s most certainly not ‘unambiguously correct’ to show them!

I would greatly appreciate the ability to hide hyphens at the beginning of a stave, as many hymnals exclude them there. It looks a bit odd when there are verse numbers, an image of which I’ve attached.
hyphen-not-wanted.png

This is on our backlog, but I’m afraid I can’t say when it will be implemented at this moment in time.

Great news—thanks, Daniel.

For now, your best bet is to grab them and drag them off the page.

Hi Daniel, one of the publishers I work with prefers e.g. hyphens at the start of the staves, but for the editions for children with some songs or chorals. of course it also applies to several German publishers I work with.

Just wanted to circle back to this, as I’m about ready to publish a new hymnal.

Elaine Gould does say it’s standard, but I’ve looked through every hymnal, and I can’t find an example of a repeated hyphen at the start of a new system. I need to decide whether to manually drag them off the page for every hymn, or whether to start a new convention… :wink:

Even if Eleaine Gould says it’s standard: I’ve never seen that in standard German editions and it looks weird to me (and to my customers). Look at Breitkopf & Härtel, (Bärenreiter, Neue Bach-Ausgabe, Neue Mozart-Ausgabe etc. There is never a repeated hyphen before a syllable when the text is under the first note of a new stave. I would really like to have an option to change this behavior.