Vocal beaming groups by melisma/syllable, not by the instrumental time-signature beaming default

In traditional vocal notation, notes are beamed together only when they share one syllable (a melisma); a syllable change breaks the beam even mid-beat, and single-syllable notes revert to flags rather than beaming across a syllable boundary the way an instrumental line would beam across a whole beat. Modern practice is genuinely split: Gould documents the traditional vocal convention as still standard for choral/hymnal engraving, while Dorico's default (and much contemporary vocal-score engraving) beams vocal lines the same as instrumental lines unless 'melisma beaming' is explicitly turned on.

Gould (traditional vocal beaming reflects word-setting); Read; Ross. Dorico's default behavior documents the opposing modern convention — this is a genuine, acknowledged split in current practice, not settled convention.

This rule needs the notated content and the rendered result together — the score says what should happen, the page says whether it did.