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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

Styled vocals with no legend

Suggestion performer.header-required Automatic fix

This section differentiates inline voices, but its header does not yet say who they are. The formatting is worth keeping until the voices are known, since it tells the next transcriber a distinct voice sings here. Add a performer legend when the voices are identified, or remove the formatting only if the section no longer needs differentiation.

Convention: Name artists in headers when voices differ.

Example

Flagged by this rule
[Verse]
<i>Second voice</i>

In the workbench this reads: Styled vocals are not yet named in a performer legend.

Accepted by this rule
[Verse: A & <i>B</i>]
<i>Second voice</i>

The fix

In the workbench this finding carries one control, labelled Remove performer formatting. The fix is classified as safe, so pressing it applies the edit directly: one press, one undo step.

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:

Use song part headers (opens in a new tab) verified Section headers, performer legends, and four differentiation styles
Spotted a mistake, or a convention we're missing? Send a suggestion(opens in a new tab)