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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

Texting shorthand in a sung line

Suggestion spelling.texting-shorthand Previewed fix

Texting shorthand is a way of writing rather than a way of singing: the letters stand in for words the vocal performs in full, and Genius wants the sung words in standardized spelling. Initialisms that are themselves said aloud (ASAP, OK, VIP) are left alone. Check the delivery before replacing this, since an artist who spells the letters out is transcribed as they sing them.

Convention: Spell deliberate mispronunciations as sung.

What this check detects

Written-only shorthand and the words it stands in for. An entry carries more than one wording where the shorthand genuinely reads more than one way. The expansion is never shouted to match an initialism-cased token: only a leading capital survives.

  • abt becomes about

  • b/c becomes because

  • bc becomes because

  • brb becomes be right back

  • btw becomes by the way

  • fr becomes for real

  • idc becomes I don't care

  • idk becomes I don't know

  • ikr becomes I know, right

  • ily becomes I love you

  • imo becomes in my opinion

  • lmk becomes let me know

  • nvm becomes never mind

  • omw becomes on my way

  • pls becomes please

  • plz becomes please

  • ppl becomes people

  • rly becomes really

  • rn becomes right now

  • smh becomes shaking my head

  • srsly becomes seriously

  • tbh becomes to be honest

  • thx becomes thanks

  • tmrw becomes tomorrow

  • ttyl becomes talk to you later

  • u becomes you

  • ur becomes your, you're

  • w/ becomes with

  • w/o becomes without

Example

Flagged by this rule
[Verse]
Idk what to tell you

In the workbench this reads: Use “I don't know” instead of “Idk”.

Accepted by this rule
[Verse]
I don't know what to tell you

The fix

In the workbench this finding carries one control, labelled Replace with I don't know. The change is contextual, so it is previewed as a diff in your document first and applies only when you confirm it.

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 standardized spellings (opens in a new tab) verified Preferred spellings with contextual exceptions
Transcribe as spoken (opens in a new tab) verified Reflect distinct pronunciation unless a phonetic spelling harms comprehension
Check a transcription in the workbench
Spotted a mistake, or a convention we're missing? Send a suggestion(opens in a new tab)