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.

Brackets with no song part in them

Warning section.header-empty No automatic fix

The brackets are here, but the song part they open is not named, so this line marks nothing. Choose a reviewed header for the language you are transcribing in; LyricLint writes the name between the brackets you already typed and leaves the rest of the line, a performer legend included, exactly as it is.

Convention: Song parts open with bracketed headers.

Example

Flagged by this rule

[]
A lyric

In the workbench this reads: This section header is empty.

Accepted by this rule

[Verse]
A lyric

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.

Sources

The sources cited by this check:

Use song part headers verified 2026-08-17 Section headers, performer legends, and four differentiation styles

Song Headers in Different Languages verified 2026-07-24 Reviewed English section-header vocabulary

Check a transcription in the workbench

Put what you hear into words.