Finale Forum

Hi all,

In the Lyrics Tool is there a way to move the position of individual hyphens? My situation is that I have a hyphenated word at the end of a DS al Coda marking, where the hyphenated word completes back at the DS. And since there's a double bar right there and the Coda begins with a different word, it looks like the hyphen is a little too close there and looks a bit confusing. I'd love to drag that hyphen just a hair back towards the left and away from the double bar. Is their a setting in the Lyrics tool (or elsewhere) that would allow me to reposition one hyphen only?

I am using Finale 2015 on a Windows 10/64 machine

Document menu > Document Options > Lyrics

Try adjusting the setting for “Maximum Space Between Hyphens”.

A second option would be to not hyphenate the word in lyrics, and then add the hyphen as an expression so you can place it exactly where you want it.

Bill

This is a real awkwardness, and I don't know of a perfect answer. What I do is use hyphenation as normal in the Lyrics window, but then break the offending hyphenated word into two with a normal space where the hyphen should be. Then I add hard spaces finished with a hard hyphen to the first syllable, until the spacing looks right. You can easily move the syllable with the attached hyphen to fine tune the result. Thus, for example, you would enter "Happy Birthday" not as "Hap-py Birth-day" but as "Hap-py Birth - day", where the hyphen in "Happy" is normal, but the hyphen in "Birthday" is hard, preceded by hard spaces and followed by a normal space. You then fine tune the position of "Birth -" to suit.
Hope this helps
Cheers
Simon

But the hard hyphen is actually an en dash, and it’s longer than the true hyphen-minus. We have long asked for this to be fixed, but we’re still waiting.

Following up on what Mike wrote, I have dealt with the issue of the hard hyphen actually being a dash by selecting it and making the font size smaller. But that's not close to a perfect solution since the hyphen in Maestro is at a slight angle while the hard hyphen (dash) is horizontal.

So until MM comes up with a fix, we do the workaround dance.

Bill