Right-align text to END of blank measure

See screenshot:

Screen Shot 2022-07-27 at 10.42.41 PM

My question regards the “unis.” system text in m63.

Can anyone suggest a better way to notate this? The three notes in m64 should be unison and arco. My plan was to add “unis.” as system text in m63, but it would probably look better if it was right-aligned (i.e. at the end of m63, not at the beginning). If I wanted to do that, how would I do it?

Or – I’m also open to better ways of cleaning up this layout if you have any suggestions.

Put unis. above arco? div. should be closer to the E.

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Or add ‘ unis.’ (with the preceding space) as a suffix to arco.

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div above pizz

arco above the D, and unis. above arco. an arco above a rest doesn’t make any sense.

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Whilst technically correct, in practice I prefer arco/pizz to precede the notes they apply to, because, when playing, the brain processes the arco/pizz in preparation for the note.

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Good suggestions, all. @user450, this too is an incorrect use of the term “system text”. I can imagine this causing confusion, so please indulge me:

System-attached text is created with AltShiftX and appears in every part but only above the top staff of a score layout (and other staves if designated). What you are (properly) using is called in the documentation staff-attached text or commonly here “Shift-X text” or just “text”.

Discourse rant

I would edit these thread titles myself, but for some reason I have not regained my Trust Level 3 status in Discourse. These trivial little details irritate me, and it would be so nice if I could just fix them myself. Was my TL3 taken away on purpose some time in May?

I’m 99% sure there’s no “on purpose” about trust levels. Trust level 3 is dependent on certain requirements being met over a rolling 100 day period. Details here: Understanding Discourse Trust Levels
(edit: looking at your public stats I can’t see any obvious reason for your falling out of TL3, but it may be that the thresholds here are different to Discourse’s in-house thresholds.)

I do have the power to alter the thread title, but I’m not sure whether it’s staff text or playing techniques that are being used here, or possibly Dorico’s dedicated divisi change labels.

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There are plenty of alternative terms for most things in music, it’s probably fair to say, and people coming to Dorico from other software or for whom English is not their first language are likely to describe things in whatever way makes sense to them.

Engaging with someone’s thread and sharing useful information, like what the “Dorico term” for something is as you do so well above @Mark_Johnson, is probably going to help more people, including the OP, in the long run as opposed to editing other people’s posts for them.

Not the post but just the thread title, I wanted to change (to remove the word ‘system’).

OP here. First, regarding the debate between Lillie and Mark, my bad, the subject really should say “staff text” not “system text.” That was an oversight on my part. If anyone has the power to change that, feel free. (I don’t think I can.)

As far as the actual musical/notational issues, maybe I should take a step back here and make sure I’m doing things right. I had been entering div/unison as staff text throughout my score, and I had been entering arco/pizz as playing techniques. Is that the correct way to do it? And if so, could one of you more experienced people clearly explain the simplest/best way to implement the above, i.e. in m64 I want the player to play both unison and arco?

The official Dorico-ish way would be to use the a divisi change, then optionally use Condensing to display the music on a single staff in the score (and possibly also the part, dependent on how easy it is to read and availability of page turns).

I’ll admit to having employed both custom “div.” and “unis.” Playing Techniques and a custom Paragraph Style that mimics the Playing Technique Font Style.

Thanks @pianoleo. This piece only has occasional divisi (and when it happens, it’s very simple) so I’m inclined to just insert it quickly as staff text instead of implementing an entirely new feature I have to learn from scratch.