A run of question marks for a lyric

A bare run of question marks is the transcriber's own placeholder rather than a marker anyone recognizes, and the same characters can be deliberate punctuation — so the replacement is offered for review instead of applied mechanically.

Convention: A lyric you can't make out is [?].

Example

[Verse]
I heard ??? tonight

In the workbench this reads: Genius marks an unclear lyric with [?], not «???».

[Verse]
I heard [?] tonight

The fix

In the workbench this finding carries one control, labelled Replace with [?]. The change is contextual, so it is previewed as a diff in your document first and applies only when you confirm it.

The convention and its limits

This check detects the pattern shown above. An accepted example passes this check; it is not a review of the whole transcription.

Source

The source cited by this check:

Unknown lyric marker (opens in a new tab) verified 2026-08-17 Use [?] for unknown lyrics