If you have not already, choose the staff in the part with the selection tool and press 4 to respace. Make sure lyrics are included in the options for calculating the spacing.

katie brady,

You wrote:

“It looks fine on my finale screen. but when i try to print this vocal only score it squishes all the lyrics and notes together.”

If I understand you correctly, then your Finale document is a 1-staff document, right?

But this means that both the score and the linked part display only one staff, right?

1) Are you viewing (on the computer screen) the score, or are you viewing the linked part?

To edit the score or the linked part, use

Document menu > Edit Score

and

Document menu > Edit Part > …

2) Are you printing the score, or the linked part?

Thank you.  Yes, I tried that (although I didn't know about pressing 4 as a shortcut, thank you. It looks fine when I print the whole score, but when I break it into parts (i.e. just one vocal part) it squishes everything together and makes it illegible.  Any other thoughts?

Use the  Select all/press 4 on your linked part(s). Fixing the spacing on the Score does not automatically transfer to the linked parts.