[Scherzo]

You might want to try "empty chords" as in this example:
(three or four blanks between the brackets usually work fine for me)...

At Mike's suggestion, vastly increasing the number of regular spaces I had previously inserted between chord symbols NOT over lyrics gave me better results (like going from 4 spaces to 16) but your suggestion works MUCH, MUCH better.

However, I also inadvertently discovered that instead of adding three or four blanks between the brackets, if you add ONE set of brackets and place as many spaces as you need between them you get the same result.

So instead of this:

[A][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][E7]

Just do this:

[A][                ][E7]

Simple!

Thanks for the suggestion & solution!!