Octave-sign bracket placement, termination, and the loco marking

An 8va bracket is drawn above the staff (8vb below) starting at the first affected note, with a dashed horizontal line continuing for the full duration of the transposed passage, and a downward (8va) or upward (8vb) hook at the bracket's END marking exactly where the transposition stops. Where the bracket ends and normal-register notation resumes, the word 'loco' may optionally be printed to make the return-to-normal explicit — this is most needed when the bracket's terminal hook could be visually ambiguous (e.g. right at a system break, or immediately followed by a further register excursion).

An 8va bracket whose dashed line simply stops with no hook and no loco marking immediately before a system break, leaving genuine ambiguity about whether the octave transposition continues onto the next system.

Gould, Behind Bars gives the hook-at-termination convention and the optional 'loco' marking explicitly. Ross, The Art of Music Engraving, agrees on both. Read, Music Notation, notes some house styles omit the terminal hook and rely on the dashed line simply ending, but treats the hook as more common/preferred practice — flag this as a minor disagreement resolved in favor of Gould's hooked-termination for Gradus, since it removes ambiguity for a young reader (APD-relevant: the extra visual cue that the bracket has definitely ended costs nothing and helps Elijah's profile specifically, even though this note is written for the Gradus general-audience site rather than BSP).

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