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.

A header bracket left open

Error syntax.unbalanced-brackets Automatic fix

Genius guidance establishes bracketed section headers. Detecting a missing delimiter is also a product-safety rule from the parser contract, not an explicit Genius catalog of every malformed case.

Convention: Song parts open with bracketed headers.

Example

Flagged by this rule

[Verse
Line

In the workbench this reads: Section header has unbalanced brackets.

Accepted by this rule

[Verse]
Line

The fix

In the workbench this finding carries one control, labelled Insert the missing closing bracket. 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 verified 2026-08-17 Section headers, performer legends, and four differentiation styles

Check a transcription in the workbench

Put what you hear into words.