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# Formatting Lyrics for HSMusic
Here are the guidelines we follow for formatting lyrics on the Homestuck Music Wiki! Give these a good look if you're adding an album to HSMusic's data or just want to see how we do it for your own wiki.
If you're filling out data now, [read more about the actual `Lyrics` data field.](common-fields.md#lyrics-field) Also, visit [Tracks - with Lyrics](https://hsmusic.wiki/list/tracks/with-lyrics/) and [References Beyond Homestuck](https://hsmusic.wiki/album/references-beyond-homestuck/) in particular for many examples!
Thanks to Niklink for filling out the vast majority of lyrics on the wiki and for writing this insightful guide.
### Punctuation
- Never use periods or commas to end a line!
- Question marks and exclamation marks are allowed to end lines, the latter should be used sparingly, and mainly when a line has more emphasis than others in the same song
### Line splits
- Keep line splits consistent in the same song!
- Identify the beat of the song and use it as a guide, although many songs try to be tricky
- When lyrics stop for longer than normal, even slightly so, consider starting a new paragraph
- Common example: if a verse has a lead-in at the end of a previous beat, keep that in its own line
- If you have any sort of full stop in the middle of a line, you should seriously consider splitting the line there, unless you can't reformat other lines for consistency
### Background vocals
- When two vocals are happening at the same time, each set of background vocals should be enclosed in parentheses and moved to the end of the line
- If it's three, the ordering of the sets of background vocals should correspond to the order that each vocal starts during that line
- Use your best judgment to determine which is the 'main' vocal line in extremely messy songs
- Similarly, for highly jumbled songs where following along to the written lyrics is challenging, you can try to intersperse the background vocals throughout the line instead of at the end
### Spoken word
- Content that is not *sung* is spoken word (and yes, rapping counts as singing)
- Spoken word content should be placed in parentheses, and punctuated normally, disregarding other rules
- Unless specifically timed to go along with the music, spoken word content should not be split into separate lines
- Spoken word content SHOULD be split into separate parentheses if the *speaker* changes, and each parentheses should be placed on a separate line
- Spoken word content that is being used as background vocals can disregard the above rules except for punctuation
### Foreign languages
- Non-English words should be accompanied by a translation in *italics*, placed inside a parentheses
- Can be placed beside each line or as a whole subsequent translated paragraph, depending on what provides more clarity
- Non-Latin scripts should be romanized
- Try to find sources for translations before making your own
- Using sourced translations can conflict with a desire to change how lines are broken up (since you may not know which parts of the translation correspond to which parts of the original lyrics), so be careful
### Miscellaneous
- Don't blindly trust official lyrics! They're slightly inaccurate more often than not!
- Consider the context of the song itself: many tricky lyrics to decipher can be fandom-specific jargon or in-jokes
- Vocal isolation can be your friend, there are probably better AI-based tools available right now but I've found https://www.lalal.ai/ to be often helpful. Change Tempo in Audacity helps as well to slow down a song
- If you're stuck, it helps to put a pin with it and come back later with a fresh mindspace
- When something is lyrical but you believe it is genuinely indecipherable, leave it as `[Indecipherable]`
- If you have to give up on lyrics you believe CAN be filled in in the future, leave it as `[??]`
- Edge case I've run into relatively often: write reversed lyrics normally but add a note saying `[Reversed]`
- Meme formatting for lyrics is only allowed in the most extremely memey of cases and when official lyrics exist, such as Mayor Maynot. If you're not sure, then don't do it and be accurate instead
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