Undertie

Read the material on both sides as one continuous unit. In plain terms, the undertie links neighboring sounds or syllables without a pause or boundary.

Its historical model is the Greek enotikon, also called the papyrological hyphen. In late Classical and Byzantine papyri—ancient documents written on papyrus—Greek words could run together; the mark showed that adjacent letters belonged to one word.

The joining idea later appeared in other settings. In older proofreading, the mark could flag a word mistakenly split by a space.

How is ‿ used in IPA?

In IPA, it marks linked pronunciation across a boundary. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is a system for writing speech sounds; /vuz‿ave/ shows them running together across a word boundary.

The combining double breve below, ͜, is a different character: it attaches under neighboring letters, while ‿ takes its own spacing position. Fonts can make the distinction hard to see.

When does an undertie join sung syllables?

In vocal notation, it joins lyric syllables under one note. This is called an elision slur or synalepha; it tells the singer to fit both syllables to that note.

The MuseScore 3 handbook notes that not every font includes the undertie. If it is unsupported, notation software may show a blank box or another elision mark; check the font before interpreting the shape.