Re: Style for Editorial Rests

On Mon, Jun 22, 2026 at 1:10 PM Gabriel Ellsworth <
[email protected]> wrote:

>
> I found Using brackets instead of parentheses for \parenthesize -
> LilyPond wiki
> <https://wiki.lilypond.community/wiki/Using_brackets_instead_of_parentheses_for_%5Cparenthesize>
> and used that code to mock up the following:
>
> [image: image.png]
>
> My concern with this approach is that busy professional singers might see
> the square brackets whilst sight-reading and think, “What does that mean?
> Am I actually supposed to observe that quarter rest or not? Do the beats in
> this measure add up to a whole note or not?” The distraction could cause
> reading errors and lost rehearsal time.
>

I would vote yes for this approach.  If I saw that in a choir piece, I
would assume the rest was not in the original source and was added by an
editor.  You might want to increase the bracket font size, though.

--
Knute Snortum