Lyric Hyphen Help

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crististan
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Post by crististan » Mon May 03, 2021 12:54 am

Hello everyone,

I’m writing music in Romanian and am having some trouble with the hyphen. This language uses the hyphen (-) to slur/combine two words on one note and sing them as one syllable. However, this same hyphen is used by Finale to break words apart into syllables and assign them to notes. As such, I have to use a dash (—) to avoid moving on to another syllable for the slur, which looks off and doesn’t match proper grammar. Does anyone have a solution to avoid this and use the shorter hyphen for text? Here’s a link with an image to show exactly what’s going on: https://imgur.com/a/7f9atjX.

Thank you in advance for your help!


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miker
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Post by miker » Mon May 03, 2021 4:33 am

The n-dash instead of a true hyphen-minus have bugged many of us for years. The best choice (IMO) is to use an elision, like in italian. The other way would be to use a hard space between the syllables, and drop a hyphen-minus in as an expression.
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Anders Hedelin
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Post by Anders Hedelin » Mon May 03, 2021 5:43 am

It sounds like you might use a non-breaking hyphen, one that does not break a word into syllables. In stead of the usual hyphen, type Alt+0173, or use Insert hard hyphen (Lyrics window > Text).
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David Ward
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Post by David Ward » Mon May 03, 2021 7:00 am

Anders Hedelin wrote:
Mon May 03, 2021 5:43 am
It sounds like you might use a non-breaking hyphen, one that does not break a word into syllables. In stead of the usual hyphen, type Alt+0173, or use Insert hard hyphen (Lyrics window > Text).
Unfortunately on a Mac the ‘hard hyphen’ appears as an n-dash which in many fonts looks wrong, as shown in the screenshot using the Finale lyrics font.
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Anders Hedelin
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Post by Anders Hedelin » Mon May 03, 2021 8:53 am

David Ward wrote:
Mon May 03, 2021 7:00 am
Unfortunately on a Mac the ‘hard hyphen’ appears as an n-dash which in many fonts looks wrong, as shown in the screenshot using the Finale lyrics font.
I didn't remember this when I posted, but I think it might have been discussed here before. It works perfectly well on Windows, too bad it doesn't on a Mac. Sorry, Crististan.
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Bill Stevens
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Post by Bill Stevens » Mon May 03, 2021 1:11 pm

If you use the hard "hyphen" (actually a dash) you can select it and reduce the font size. This makes it about the same length as a proper hyphen, but it still doesn't look the same. I've done this where there was one occurrence in a piece, usually in chant, but it would be a pain to have to do it over and over.

::: Bill
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Perotinus
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Post by Perotinus » Wed May 05, 2021 5:41 pm

And choosing a different "Hyphen Character" setting in "Document Options--Lyrics" can't help with this?
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Peter Thomsen
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Post by Peter Thomsen » Wed May 05, 2021 8:28 pm

In
Document Options - Lyrics
you can also choose an Alternate Hyphen Font.
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miker
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Post by miker » Wed May 05, 2021 11:04 pm

I've tried. I don't see how the alternate hyphen font would help. I talked to one of the old Finale guys (name is gone) years ago, and he said any hyphen character would trigger the jump. What they need to do is to alter a glyph (m-dash, maybe) so it's the same size as the hyphen minus, and assign it to the n-dash slot.

That's way out of my pay grade, but maybe one of you font guys could do it.
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Peter Thomsen
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Post by Peter Thomsen » Thu May 06, 2021 5:18 am

Sorry, I was not clear.
I did not mean to say that an alternate hyphen font will help, just wanted to point out the option.


Now for the hyphen problem:
There is a non-breaking hyphen in Unicode, located in slot#1292.
Unlike the en-dash the non-breaking hyphen has the same width as the regular hyphen.
To use the non-breaking hyphen you must use a Unicode font.

By The Way
The en-dash is located in slot#1294.
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