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
__
.
Program reference: events LyricEvent, HyphenEvent, and ExtenderEvent. Objects LyricHyphen, LyricExtender and LyricText.
Examples: input/test/lyric-hyphen-retain.ly.
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This page is for LilyPond-2.2.6 (stable-branch). |