• Click a staff to tell Finale the staff to which you want lyrics attached.
• In Type Into Score, use the up and down arrows to move to the previous or next verse, chorus or section.
• In Type Into Score mode or Click Assignment mode, drag the positioning triangles at the left edge of the screen to specify the vertical position of the baseline for the lyric set you’re inserting. For a full discussion of these triangles and their functions, see Lyrics.
• In Type Into Score mode, click near the first note to indicate which note you want to attach a syllable to. Then type the lyrics normally.
• In Type Into Score mode, click near a note to select (highlight) the syllable attached to it. Anything you now type replaces the highlighted syllable.
• In Click Assignment mode, click near the first note to attach the first syllable in the scrolling window. (If the note is in Voice 2, shift-click.)
• In Click Assignment mode, option-click near the first note to tell Finale to assign all syllables in the lyric set displayed in the scrolling window. Finale attaches one syllable at a time to subsequent notes in the melody, automatically skipping over rests and tied notes. (Finale only assigns lyrics to the notes in the current layer, as identified by the pressed Layer popup menu in the lower-left corner of the window.)
• In Edit Word Extensions mode, click near the sustained syllable to display a handle at the end of the syllable. (If the note is in Voice 2, shift-click.) Drag this handle to the right to draw a word extension underline (indicating that the syllable is sustained through more than one note). Click this handle and press delete to remove the word extension.
• In Adjust Syllables mode, click near the syllable you want to move to display handles on that syllable and any others attached to the same note. (If the syllable is assigned to a note in Voice 2, shift-click.) Drag a lower handle to move the syllable; select it and press clear to restore it to its original position; select it and press delete to remove it from the score. Select several vertically-aligned handles (by shift-clicking, drag-enclosing or using command-A) and choose alignment and justification options from the Alignment and Justification submenus. See Lyrics Menu.
• In Clone Lyric mode, click one measure, shift-click another measure, drag-enclose several measures, or click to the left of the staff to select one measure, additional measures, a group of measures, or the entire staff at once. Drag the first selected measure so that it’s superimposed on the first target measure to copy the lyrics from the selected measures to the target measures.
• In Shift Lyrics mode, click near the first syllable you want shifted to shift that syllable and subsequent syllables one note to the right or left (automatically skipping rests and tied notes).

With Adjust Syllables selected in the Lyrics menu, control-click the handle closest to a syllable. A contextual menu will be displayed where you can select various items.

 

Lyric handles

Menu item	What it does
Align Default	Changes the alignment of the syllables back to Finale’s global setting
Align Center	Changes the alignment of the syllables to centered under the note
Align Left	Changes the alignment of the syllables to the left under the note
Align Right	Changes the alignment of the syllables to the right under the note
Justify Default	Changes the justification of the syllables back to Finale’s global setting
Justify Center	Changes the justification of the syllables to centered relative to each other
Justify Left	Changes the justification of the syllables to the left relative to each other
Justify Right	Changes the justification of the syllables to the right relative to each other