Finale Forum

Hi.
I have a problem with lyrics. I'm working on Finale 2014 on Windows.
I want to write lyrics into scores without hypens between every syllable of word, and i can't find any authomatic way to do it. Is there any fuction on Finale, witch can make it?

In order to advance to the next syllable without entering a hyphen, press the spacebar.

N.

To give you the best possible help we need to know why you need to do that.

The better we understand, the better we can help.

Maybe i didn't said it clear..
I want to achieve something like that (see picture): There is 1 word, 2 syllables, 2 notes, but the word is not splitted

It seems that in the example, the words without hyphens were done so because of a lack of space. I am thinking the ideal situation would be to put hyphens in, for clarity. However, you can type the whole word on the first note and press space twice to get to the third note.

Zuill

I looked for more "elegant" way
Friend told me that Sibelius have some plugin to do it automaticly and i wondered if exist somethink like that in Finale.

I agree with Zuill; it looks like a spacesaving method, rather than a desired outcome. Why would you want to make it more difficult for the singer, especially one who may not be a native speaker?

This is notes for native singers (traditional Catolic Songs).
I have to save some space.

I don't think the hyphens will take up much space. I provided the sample without knowing the proper syllabication, so pardon my ignorance. I guessed best I could. You'll see, hopefully, that providing hyphens makes the notation clearer.

If this still is unacceptable, then try my earlier suggestion.

Zuill

Thanks for help.

If I recall correctly, if the width between the syllables in the measure is too small, then Finale will not display the hyphens, even if you have included them. So, if you want to reproduce your example exactly, you may want to experiment with the width of your measure to see if you can make it small enough so that the hyphens disappear. The fact that in your original example there are hyphens between at least some of the words shows that hyphens were deemed acceptable to whoever engraved your example.

I think it's a mistake to try to reproduce old printing exactly, but in Document / Document Options / Music Spacing, you can try turning off considering lyrics in the spacing algorithm.

The original example is quite common in old liturgical music—the language doesn’t matter. The engraver spaced the words and notes so that everything is clear and easy to read. Hyphens were used to preserve note spacing over short words.

Even though it is not the modern practice as Zulli laid it out, there’s nothing wrong with it at all. Again, as long as clarity is maintained.

Except... Finale uses the spaces and hyphens to assign syllables to notes. If you change the layout, this will cause problems with multi-syllable words where the syllables are not assigned to notes. As you have read, you have the choice of using hyphens or not as long as syllables are assigned the way you want.