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I've found some notation that I'm not familiar with in the violin part for the musical Tuck Everlasting. It's a horizontal arrow that starts at the stem of a note and points rightward along the staff:

Violin score. One note has a small arrow protruding from the middle of its stem and pointing toward the right.

I think it appears only once more in the entire violin part, in a different piece:

Another example of the rightward pointing arrow. This time it is protruding from a notehead.

I suspect this is just an odd engraving error (of which there are others). A similar arrow is used in this book to highlight a jump in measure numbers; e.g. bar 36 will immediately follow bar 32 presumably due to cuts during revision, and this arrow will appear to the left of the number 36. It looks like it could be a misplaced arrow of this sort, but curiously there are no measure number jumps near either place where this appears.

If there were some meaning to this arrow I'm not sure why it would be present in bar 53 but not in 49, nor why it would appear on the first but not second note of bar 16. Just throwing this out there in case someone has seen something similar before.

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    It's not a standard notation; I haven't seen anything exactly like it in ca 35 years of playing. Non-standard notations are usually explained; look for text at the beginning or end (perhaps even in a different part like the conductor's score). I find it very unlikely that it means anything about jumping to another spot; it seems attached to a specific note, and even a specific pitch within a double stop. Commented Jun 24, 2023 at 12:03
  • The fact that it shows up in 2 places suggests not an engraving error. Can you find it in other instruments' parts? I agree that there's agood chance it's defined in some preface. Can you post the edition/publisher this is from? Commented Jun 27, 2023 at 16:40
  • I've been through most of this book now and I'm pretty sure there's no explanation for the notation. I'll be joining rehearsals in a few weeks and I'll check with the director then and report back. The materials for this show come from Concord Theatricals and that's the only organization mentioned anywhere in my part; I don't know whether that's the publisher. Commented Jun 28, 2023 at 22:42
  • Did the director know what it was supposed to mean? (If so, please post an answer.) Commented Nov 30, 2023 at 1:58
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    Unfortunately not. I've informed Concord about this as a possible error. I don't think I'll get confirmation from them, but if I do I'll post an answer. Commented Dec 1, 2023 at 2:22

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It looks like an accent, (which is an articulation marking).

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