Sometimes in Sibelius, a lyric hyphen that occurs at the end of a system will collide with the preceding syllable, like this unsightly result, even when applying note spacing:
This usually happens when the system is tightly spaced horizontally. That’s not to excuse the result, because it would be better if Sibelius accommodated space for the hyphen, but I’m unaware of any setting that will automatically prevent this from happening.
Unlike ordinary hyphens, you can’t just click and drag this particular hyphen to the right to reposition it… or can you? Let’s explore a few solutions.
Solution 1: Drag the syllable to the left
One solution is to drag the syllable slightly to the left.
That’s an easy fix but it leaves you with a misaligned lyric syllable.
Solution 2: Drag the barline to the “right”
Another solution is to drag the rightmost barline to the right. This actually doesn’t move the barline, because it’s fixed at its position relative to the page margin, but it shifts everything else in the bar to the left.
That’s more visually appealing, but it won’t survive a note spacing reset:
Solution 3: Drag a special handle to move the hyphen to the right
There is another option. Click in the vicinity of the bottom-right lyric (or, make things easier on yourself and switch on View > Invisibles > Handles) to reveal a special handle, which, as far as I can tell, only appears on lyrics with a hyphen that appear at the end of systems:
(The other lines will appear if Magnetic Layout is switched on.)
If you drag this handle to the right, it will move the hyphen:
This edit will survive a note spacing reset (however, be aware it will not survive Appearance > Design and Position > Reset Position).
Perhaps in the future, this issue will be improved so that there is no need to manually fix the problem, and we will look back on this post with nostalgia, marveling at how much better things are than in the past. If you own a DeLorean that is capable of reaching 88 mph, a functioning flux capacitor, and a power source of 1.21 gigawatts, please tell us about it.
Until then, although they don’t fix this particular issue, our recently released Scoring Express Choral & Vocal templates offer lots of other ways to improve the appearance of your vocal music in Sibelius, as well as in Dorico. And they’re a lot less expensive than a time machine!