Handle Positioning dialog box

How to get there

Choose the Articulation tool and click a note. The Articulation Selection dialog box appears.
Click Create or select an existing symbol and click Edit). The Articulation Designer dialog box appears.
Click Handle Positioning.

What it does

The Articulation Designer dialog box contains positioning options that allow you to create articulation marks (accents, staccatos, and so on) that position themselves automatically in relation to the notehead. HandlesA small square which appears on currently "selectable" elements in the score. Handles allow you to select, edit and adjust musical elements in the score. allow you to make manual adjustments to Finale's articulation placement on a case by case basis, but there are times that you might like to adjust the positioning for every instance of that character.

Noteman says: You generally don’t need to specify a handle position for each marking for centering purposes; Finale automatically measures a symbol’s width and centers it over its note, even if the handle is to the left of the note.

For example, suppose you place a fermata on a note that comes from a nonstandard music font, and you decide that even though you’ve told Finale to center it on the note, it’s a little bit too far to the left. Using the Handle Positioning dialog box, you can teach Finale to place the symbol slightly farther to the right from now on, by slightly shifting the symbol’s handle (which is always in the lower-left corner of the symbol).

You can also use the Handle Positioning feature to place breath marks and railroad tracks to the right of their attached notes automatically, for example, or to compensate for a symbol’s extra height when you use the Avoid staff lines positioning option in the Articulation Designer dialog box.

Main Symbol • Flipped Symbol: H: • V:. Type numbers in these text boxes that specify how much you want to move the marking. A positive H: number moves the marking to the right and a positive V: number moves it upward. You can specify these options separately for the Main Symbol and its upside-down Flipped symbol, displayed in the Articulation Designer dialog box.
Cancel • OK. Click OK (or press RETURN) to confirm, or Cancel to discard, the changes you’ve made and return to the Articulation Designer dialog box.