Hello, I noticed some strange offset of some notes and don’t know, where this originates from.
I will post screenshots first:
I tried deleting the downstem voice and re-inputting it. I also cut the tie leading into the bar. This all did not change the offset.
If someone might have a guess what’s going on here, it would make me happy (as even my customer noticed this)…
The excerpt:
Mozart K608 - excerpt.dorico (865.3 KB)
The music is aligned to the “main” note of the stem. You’ve got a down-stem G and an up-stem F (assuming Treble clef); each of those notes has got a second on the “other” side of the stem.
Whether that’s the traditional engraving practice, or just a consequence of computer spacing rules, I don’t know, but Dorico is in good company, as Finale and MuseScore both do the same thing.:
Hi @kb,
adding to the explanation by @benwiggy , to change this visualisation, you can set the Voice column index of the lower voice in RH to 1:
Thank you Christian and Ben.
Both wonderful explanations and solutions.
Now that I have set the Voice collumn index to 1 they do align - but, yes it still leaves a question, what would look better…
That’s what we need to see, thank you Ben.
The thing is, eyes might have got used to bad engraving - and then take that as an example…
I guess in my case the customer might have noticed something, because these notes (f,g) are exactly an octave apart, and he will have to play them with his right hand alone.
With the due respect to Mrs. Gould, as a Pianist I would be more comfortable, in this particular case, with the “Voice column index 1 (for the lower voice )” visualisation for those chords. But the options are there, and can be changed as desired 
In other contexts the correct engraving rules should be followed, for sure.
For reference, there was also a thread about this in 2022.
I think we can decide differently for different cases.
For the first chord I would prefer to align the seconds to the same voice columns, in the second chord not, because here the rule of aligning the main voice column makes sense.
It’s not one of her more controversial stipulations. After a bit of research, it does seem to be a consistently stated rule in literature:
Gardner Read (Music Notation, p.71)
Boosey & Hawkes Style Guide (p. 32)
Standard Music Notation Practice (Music Publishers’ Association, p. 7)
Even the ill-fated British Standard 4754 explicitly states this!
Several other books I can find infer as much by saying that chords with seconds should be aligned on the “correct” notehead, without giving the 2-voice example.
Boustead: Writing Down Music
Schirmer Style Guide, p.31.
Alfred Essential Dictionary of Music Notation.
(I’m sure @FredGUnn has got some more.)
I certainly can’t find any books that explicitly suggest the opposite. It would be interesting to see if there are any published instances.
Yeah, that one is an actual rule. Here’s Rosenthal pg 6
(My copy is very clean, but whoever owned it before me actually crossed out the “not” example in red pencil, LOL)
Here’s an example from Ross pg 150:
I found some further examples in a couple German books about music engraving. Especially, Helene Wanske (last example below) mentions that the “recent” practice in contrast to the former one is to vertically align the stems so that there are only two note columns which seems to be the case in sheet music engraved by Schott Music (Mainz, Germany).
Ah, the Wanske book - I learned so very much from it! Highly recommended, if you can find it …
Helene Wanske, Musiknotation
Von der Syntax des Notenstichs zum EDV gesteuerten Notensatz
She wrote the book in a time, when (physical) music engraving was in decline, and very early music type setting computer systems in their infancy, and she talked to as many engravers as she could to salvage endangered knowledge…
