Re: Style for Editorial Rests

I see you've found the Wikipedia article I was going to cite; as a 
singer and former instrumentalist (woodwinds and cello), I would 
strongly suggest the caesura rather than a comma. Singers and wind 
players breathe when they see commas; a comma over a rest would give 
rise to much head scratching.

Colin

On 2026-06-22 12:13, Gabriel Ellsworth wrote:
> On Mon, 22 Jun 2026, Mark Knoop wrote:
>
>     I would strongly advise against this. The comma already has a
>     specific and common musical meaning. Almost any other punctuation
>     glyph would be preferable, e.g. an asterisk.
>
>
> Thank you for your reply, Mark!
>
>
> My initial idea here is the comma because it most resembles the symbol 
> that I, as a singer, pencil into my own scores when my choirmaster 
> says something like “take an eighth off.”
>
>
> By the “specific and common musical meaning,” do you mean “a brief, 
> silent pause, during which metrical time is not counted” (source: 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesura#Music 
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesura#Music>)?
>
>
> My hope is that if the comma is centered directly over the rest, it’s 
> clear that it’s an annotation on the rest. And my output is mostly 
> Renaissance polyphony, where basically no one would ever expect or see 
> a comma used to mean “a pause in which metrical time is not counted.” 
> (At least, I’ve never seen an edition of polyphony that uses a comma 
> in this way.)
>
>
> But I don’t want to confuse people, especially people outside my choir 
> if I share my scores more widely.
>
>
> Looking at B.14 List of breath marks (LilyPond Notation Reference) 
> <https://lilypond.org/doc/v2.27/Documentation/notation/list-of-breath-marks>I 
> see that there are other options that I could consider, such as 'tickmark.
>
>
> I’ll think about possible alternatives to \musicglyph"comma".
>