When you place an articulation marking onto a note, Finale automatically centers it and places it a precise distance away from the notehead. Once the marking appears in the score, you’re free to drag it into a new position.

To restore the markings’ original positions, eliminating any hand-positioning you’ve done, drag-enclose the desired articulations and press the BACKSPACE key (laptop users Fn-6).

The following procedure can be used to move a specific marking into a new position, such as moving breath marks a uniform distance to the right of the notes to which they’re attached.

To center and reposition existing articulations

1. Click the Selection tool   and select the region of music you want to affect. See Selecting music for some region-selecting shortcuts.
2. ChooseUtilities > Change> Articulation Assignments. The Change Articulation Assignments dialog box appears.
3. If you want Finale to reposition all articulations in the selected region back to the default position, click OK.
4. If you want Finale to reposition only a certain articulation marking, click Position Selected Articulations; click Select, and double-click the symbol you want.

You can also swap one marking for another throughout the selected region: select Change All Articulations (or Selected Articulations) to Articulation, and click Select to specify the replacement symbol.

You can also specify new positioning information by entering numbers into the H: and V: text boxes. You’re adding distance to either the usual or existing positions of the selected markings, depending on your selection from the drop-down list. The units are whatever you’ve selected using the Measurement Units command (Edit menu). For articulations designed to be placed On Notehead Side, or On Stem Side, positive numbers move the symbols to the right (H:) and away from the staff (V:); negative numbers move them left and in toward the staff. For articulations designed to be placed Manually, Above Note or Below Note, positive numbers move the symbols to the right (H:) and upward (V:); negative numbers move them down and left. See Change Articulation Assignments dialog box and Articulation Designer dialog box for more detailed explanations of these options.

5. Click OK (or press ENTER). Finale neatly positions every articulation mark in the selected region, according to your specifications.

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