Let X be a minimal surface of general type with p g > 0 (equivalently, b + > 1) and let K 2 be the square of its canonical class. Building on work of Khodorovskiy and Rana, we prove that if X develops a Wahl singularity of length in a Q-Gorenstein degeneration, then 4K 2 + 7. This improves on the current best-known upper bound due to Lee 400 K 2 4 . Our bound follows from a stronger theorem constraining symplectic embeddings of certain rational homology balls in surfaces of general type. In particular, we show that if the rational homology ball B p,1 embeds symplectically in a quintic surface, then p 12, partially answering the symplectic version of a question of Kronheimer.is a continued fraction expansion. The number is called the length of the singularity. The index of the singularity is p and is bounded above by 2 .Theorem 1.1. Let X be a minimal surface of general type with positive geometric genus p g > 0 which has a finite set of Du Val and Wahl singularities. Then the length of any of the Wahl singularities satisfies 4K 2 X + 7 .Remark 1.2. The best bound for Wahl singularities we could find in the algebraic geometry literature 1 is due to Lee [Lee99, Theorem 23], who showed that if X is a stable surface of general type having a Wahl singularity of length , and if the minimal model S of the minimal resolution X of X has general type, then 400 K 2 X 4 .