Singing with a choir last night I learned that in English notation a regular eighth rest is an eighth rest, but if you write it backwards (flag to the right) it becomes a quarter rest. Or, I guess, actually a crotchet rest.

I don't remember ever seeing that before. It was obvious from the context what it meant, so it didn't throw my counting off, but I was surprised.

That's common in French music. I haven't seen it much anywhere else, though.

Glad you figured it out. It can throw you if you aren't aware.

I've seen enough variations on how people write a quarter rest that I'm not really surprised by pretty much any random squiggly as long as it's consistent.

[quote="AndrewMeronek"]I've seen enough variations on how people write a quarter rest that I'm not really surprised by pretty much any random squiggly as long as it's consistent.[/quote]

This, 100%. I’ve had at least a couple of handwritten charts (probably jazz ones) where the quarter rests were literally just rectangles.

Related to the OP, I knew that once upon a time , but had completely forgotten. Thanks for the reminder!

Of course, we’ve got one in our book where the eight rests have the flags off to the left, but all of the note heads are off to the left too, regardless of stem direction. Maybe the composer wanted all the notes to be half value. :biggrin:

With my computer down I hand write music now. Quarter rests are just slashes, eighth rests are “7”... anything to make it go a little faster. Makes sense to the cats reading it :good: