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3.11.1 Entering lyrics

Lyrics are entered in a special input mode. This mode is is introduced by the keyword \lyrics. In this mode you can enter lyrics, with punctuation and accents without any hassle. Syllables are entered like notes, but with pitches replaced by text. For example,

       \lyrics { Twin-4 kle4 twin- kle litt- le star2 }

A word in Lyrics mode begins with: an alphabetic character, _, ?, !, :, ', the control characters ^A through ^F, ^Q through ^W, ^Y, ^^, any 8-bit character with ASCII code over 127, or a two-character combination of a backslash followed by one of `, ', ", or ^.

Subsequent characters of a word can be any character that is not a digit and not white space. One important consequence of this is that a word can end with }. The following example is usually a bug. The syllable includes a }, and hence the opening brace is not balanced

       \lyrics { twinkle}

Similarly, a period following a alphabetic sequence, is included in the resulting string. As a consequence, spaces must be inserted around property commands

       \override Score . LyricText #'font-shape = #'italic

Any _ character which appears in an unquoted word is converted to a space. This provides a mechanism for introducing spaces into words without using quotes. Quoted words can also be used in Lyrics mode to specify words that cannot be written with the above rules

       \lyrics { He said: "\"Let" my peo ple "go\"" }

However, at least for english texts, you should use

       \lyrics { He said: ``Let my peo ple go'' }

to get the correct shape of the starting and ending quote.

Centered hyphens are entered as `--' between syllables. The hyphen will have variable length depending on the space between the syllables and it will be centered between the syllables.

When a lyric is sung over many notes (this is called a melisma), this is indicated with a horizontal line centered between a syllable and the next one. Such a line is called an extender line, and it is entered as __.

See also

Program reference: events LyricEvent, HyphenEvent, and ExtenderEvent. Objects LyricHyphen, LyricExtender and LyricText.

Examples: input/test/lyric-hyphen-retain.ly.

Bugs

The definition of lyrics mode is too complex.

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