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Put what you hear
into words.

A hard-to-hear word. A second singer. A chorus that comes back around. Find your way through the little decisions that go into writing lyrics for Genius.

Start with the bit you’re stuck on

Where does the advice come from?

Each entry names its source and authority tier. A linked linter check may cover only part of a convention; read its example and the entry’s qualifications for the limits.

The ascending bars ahead of each entry's tier label are its standing drawn as a ladder: four steps for the four source tiers, filled up to the tier the entry's sources establish. Climbing it is evidence, never an edit: an entry rises only when a higher-tier source confirming it joins its citations.

LyricLint advisory
LyricLint's own preference, on a convention no Genius source states: the blank line between song parts, the text-hygiene checks. It shares the bottom step with community guidance, because our preference claims no more standing than unreviewed community writing.
Genius community guidance
Ordinary community voice in any venue: an unreviewed annotation, guide-page text with no staff badge, an ordinary forum post.
External reference
An authority outside Genius: a dictionary, a language academy, a platform's own documentation. It ranks below a reviewed annotation because it is authoritative about language, not about Genius.
Editor-reviewed Genius annotation
A reviewed Genius annotation with no staff among its contributors.
Genius staff guidance
Genius staff wrote or touched it: a staff-badged guide page, staff among an annotation's contributors, or a staff reply on the forum. Who wrote it decides the tier, never the venue it appears in.
What about spelling and grammar?

The workbench also uses Harper for English spelling, grammar, and style suggestions. Those suggestions come from the proofreader, so they are not listed here as Genius conventions. Read them in the context of the lyrics before applying a change.

58 results

A line that reads like prose

Suggestion line.prose-density No automatic fix

Multiple clauses and a high word count make the transcription look prose-like. There is no fixed character limit; listen for musical line breaks and split only when supported by phrasing.

Convention: Transcribe line by line, not in paragraphs.

Example

Flagged by this rule
[Verse]
I walked into the room, and everyone was talking; the lights were fading, while another story started and nobody stopped to breathe before the ending arrived.

In the workbench this reads: This line reads like several lyric lines combined.

Accepted by this rule
[Verse]
A short lyric line

The fix

This finding has no automatic fix. Resolving it is a judgment call, so the workbench points at the exact range and leaves the edit to you.

The convention and its limits

This check detects the pattern shown above. An accepted example passes this check; it is not a review of the whole transcription.

Source

The source cited by this check:

Individual lyric lines (opens in a new tab) verified Split prose-like transcription into lyric lines
Check a transcription in the workbench
Spotted a mistake, or a convention we're missing? Send a suggestion(opens in a new tab)