The Digital Tradition standard is to put the name of the songwriter in parentheses on the line under the title, and the title should be ALLCAPS. In general, the DT attributions are fairly accurate, although there are some mistakes. We have an Attributions PermaThread for handling corrections to the DT.

But the word "by" in other lyrics sources (and on the radio), often means the person who recorded the song, not the songwriter. Some lyrics in our Forum are copy-pasted from "those" lyrics Websites, so you have to be careful - and there's no way to ensure uniformity in the Forum on this.

For lyrics transcribed from a recording, I like to put "from the singing of so-and so" or "collected by so-and-so."

If the name of a songwriter is discovered after lyrics have been posted, I've taken to adding the name in parentheses, and putting it (and other corrections) in the brown moderator font. Once lyrics in the Forum are reviewed and fit for harvesting, I change the song title to allcaps, big, bold.

-Joe-