Thanks for the clarification. I went back to Gould and indeed found a reference to octave accidentals (page 90). It seems to be more a suggestion than a rule. (I don't have other engraving texts on hand, but as a cellist, the spacing struck me as jarring. Perhaps it is useful for keyboardists?)
The source material I am copying keeps the C-natural accidental closer to the stem, like the second chord from my example, and I have seen other hand-engraved scores do this as well, for the sake of prioritizing horizontal space. If I wanted to override the position of this single accidental, how might I do so? Cheers, -Ahanu On Thu, Jan 5, 2023, 03:46 Jean Abou Samra <[email protected]> wrote: > Le 05/01/2023 à 07:26, Ahanu Banerjee a écrit : > > Hello, > > > > Please see the example below. I tried running it in 2.22 and 2.23 as > > well, and got the same result. Am I missing an obvious reason that the > > c-natural accidental is placed so far to the left? > > > > \version "2.24.0" > > \language "english" > > \relative { > > \clef bass > > \key a \major > > % unexpected placement of "c-natural" accidental > > <f, c' a' f'> s4*3 > > % expected placement shown here > > \break <f c' a' c> > > } > > > > According to classical engraving rules, accidentals for notes of the > same pitch at different octaves should be placed at the same horizontal > position. In the first case, there are accidentals for two F notes, > which must be aligned. If the C note's natural were placed as close > as possible to its note head, the two F naturals would need to be > placed farther, which would look bad for the higher F, and LilyPond > basically favors the F naturals because there are two of them. > > The same effect is at play in the second example: the C notes > get the priority for being placed closer to the note heads because > there are two of them. > > Best, > Jean > >
