USAGE GUIDELINES

This section give some guidelines for use of the commands and environments offered by the style. These are not absolute standards, merely the suggestions that I have come up with after entering some 250 songs into a style based songbook. These guidelines rarely justify themselves, try things out and decide for yourself whether they're right or wrong.

Make each line of a song its own paragraph. This means that the songbook file is mostly double spaced. This allows the file to more easily survive encounters with users who edit the songbook source using a non-text-editor, such as WordPerfect.
Use of the Ch command:
- Always try to attach a chord to a single syllable. If you need to include more than one syllable with the chord then include extra text in units of syllables (whenever possible). For example:
  
  Do:
  
  Ch{G}{Halle}luia
  
  Don't:
  
  Ch{G}{Hall}eluia
- Always include punctuation along with a syllable that has been included in a Ch command. For example:
  
  Do:
  
  Ch{G}{Lord!}
  
  Don't:
  
  Ch{G}{Lord}!
- Only place a single chord within a Ch command. For example:
  
  Do:
  
  Ch{
  
  }{} $\displaystyle \bs$ Ch{G}{} $\displaystyle \bs$ Ch{D}{} $\displaystyle \bs$ Ch{
  }{}
  
  Don't:
  
  Ch{
  
  GD
  }{}
- Every line must contain at least one Ch command; even if it's an empty one. For example:
  
  Do:
  
  Behold your God!Ch{}{}
  
  Don't:
  
  Behold your God!
Extension of syllables by adding dashes. When extending a syllable because its chord is wider than the syllable should always be done using either the SBem or SBen commands. Then the dash will not appear in the words-only songbooks. For example:

Do:

Ch{G#m7/C}{aSBem}

Don't:

Ch{G#m7/C}{a---}
Typographic conventions. L^ATEX knows about certain ligatures; that is, is groups certain sequences of letters into a single character unit. ff is one of these ligatures and is typeset in a special way; however this cannot occur if the f's are split by a Ch command. Therefore, if at all possible, never split up the following character sequences with the Ch command: ff, fi, ffi, fl, ffl.
Ordering of songs in the songbook. In order to allow L^ATEX to fill pages in as natural a manner as possible, it is best to order the songs within the songbook based upon a wordbk formatted songbook. In that way, the words-only songbooks will contain optimally filled columns. Start by placing the longest songs first, only inserting shorter songs to cause page breaks at logical intervals.