A Beginner’s Guide to Essay-Writing

By Björn HeileA Beginner’s Guide to Essay-Writing

By Björn Heile

How to Use This Guide

Where to Seek Help

What Do We Want from You and Why? Some Introductory Remarks

The Writing Stages: Before You Start, in the Middle, and After You Have Finished

Structure and Argument

Language Use and Style

‘Flow’

Sentence Structure

Spelling and Word Use

Citing and Quoting

Formatting and Bibliographic References

Online Sources

How to Use This Guide

Many new students feel ill-prepared to write essays, either because they lack confidence in

their own abilities or because they are unsure about what is expected of them. While you will

simply have to take the plunge eventually and while there is no better way of learning than by

doing, this guide is intended to help you on your way and avoid some of the commonest

pitfalls. It is based both on my own experiences as a writer and on what I perceive to be the

most frequent problems encountered by students.

The best way to use it is to read it carefully before you embark on your first essays. Not

everything will be of equal use to you at first, and you are not expected to get everything right

from the start. But if you do find some of the advice useful, you may want to keep the guide

in a safe place and consult it whenever you need it. Also keep in mind that the suggestions I

make in this guide are only that: suggestions – you are not to follow them slavishly if they do

not work for you. Everybody works differently, and it is for you to discover your particular

method; we can only help you with that. So, make your own experiences!

Obviously this is only a very short introduction and will not prepare you for every problem

you may face, but there are many books on the market that should provide further

assistance; Lynne Truss’s Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to

Punctuation (London: Profile, 2003) has even become a bestseller! For music-specific

problems, such as how to refer to musical works or specify pitches, one specially

recommended book is D. Kern Holoman, Writing about Music: A Style Sheet from the Editors

of 19th-Century Music (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988) (some of Holoman’s

advice concerns the specific journal he edits, and is therefore not universally applicable – he

also tells you to avoid Britishisms – but in general the rules are sound). This will be available

from both the main and departmental libraries as well as the university bookshop. But there

are many comparable publications, either for music in particular or for academic writing in

general (there’s a whole shelf load in the library under PF 290-292). Buying ordinary

reference books such as a dictionary, a thesaurus, and a grammar will likewise always be a

sensible investment: I personally prefer the Oxford and Longmans ranges, but there are

sound competitors which are often cheaper. These days of course, a lot of reference works

are available online: check the library’s link list at

<http://www.sussex.ac.uk/library/reference/> (particularly note ‘Oxford Online Reference’, a

superb source).

Where to Seek Help

If this guide doesn’t solve your problems and more books only seem to make matters worse,

your first port of call should normally be your course tutor or your academic advisor. He or

she won’t sort out your grammar woes for you, but they should be able to point you in the

right direction. There are also student mentors in HUMS who give advice on study skills

(<http://www.sussex.ac.uk/hums/1-4-3-3-1.html>), and there are even writers-in-residence

(<http://www.sussex.ac.uk/hums/1-4-9.html>).

Additionally, the study skills page on the website of the Sussex Language Institute

contains a range of fantastic resources, including an introduction to essay-writing similar to

this one and a guide to punctuation: check <http://www.sussex.ac.uk/langc/skills/intro.html>.

If you are dyslexic, or suspect that you are, you should contact the university’s student

services department (if you haven’t already done so): check

<http://www.sussex.ac.uk/equalities/1-2.html> for more details.

What Do We Want from You and Why? Some Introductory Remarks

In many of your courses essays form a large part of the assessment. You should see this as

an opportunity to tell your side of the story. Whereas many other forms of assessment, such

as unseen exams, focus largely on the reproduction of facts, essays bring your critical

intelligence into play. Although knowing the facts is indispensable for a successful essay, it is

your ability to make sense of them that really makes a difference. Another advantage of

essays is that you can learn a lot while writing them: firstly, how to research a topic on your

own, secondly, how to develop an original argument, and thirdly, how to fashion your ideas

into a written text. While there can be a great variety of positive examples, a successful

essay will normally demonstrate a sound grasp of the subject matter, present an original

argument, and support this argument persuasively in a well-structured text.

Some students find it hard to accept the second and third items of this list. However, as

mentioned above, being able to reproduce the facts is only the beginning in an essay; being

able to evaluate them critically and making one’s case articulately are at least of equal

importance. Demonstrating your capacity for independent thought does not mean that you

have to square the circle or reinvent music history every time you write an essay, nor is it an

invitation for purely subjective judgement. Rather, you should be able to show that you can

critique what you read in books and complement it with your own assessment of the subject

matter. Admittedly, getting the balance right is not always easy, but this can be learned over

time. Moreover, there is more than one ‘correct’ spot on the continuum between a neutral

summary of published material and completely independent ideas. As with so many things,

learning by doing is the best method. What all this implies is that what counts is not which

answer you give to an essay question, but how you substantiate the answer that you do give:

what we look for as examiners is not the ‘right’ answer but consistency in your argument and

in the evidence you cite.

What many students take issue with is that such aspects as language use, essay

structure, and writing style form part of the assessment. At this stage, I could content myself

with citing university legislation, but, as it happens, I support the legislation in this particular

instance. What seems to have happened is that these students have fallen victim to a

popular belief according to which there is a clear distinction between the content of an essay

and the words used to express it. Proponents of this view regard language simply as a

conduit for the ‘message’. Linguists have known for many years that this is erroneous: textual

meaning only resides in words, not outside them. To put it closer to home: we can only give

you credit for what you do say, not for what you may have wanted to say. As I mentioned

above, part of your task is to make a persuasive argument, and this requires a certain facility

in language use. (Interestingly, when I discuss books with students, they are more likely to

critique the writing than the content, arguing that one is ‘more comprehensible’ than another,

or that it makes a ‘more convincing case’ – you should follow the same ideals in your own

writing.)

But more importantly, being able to argue your case articulately and eloquently is one of

the greatest assets you can gain while at university: there is no profession or walk of life

where this skill is not a prime advantage. Finally, from my personal experience the old maxim

that clarity of language shows clarity of thought is mostly true (with the exception of such

cases as dyslexia). Accordingly, acquiring greater verbal dexterity may help you to achieve

deeper insight too. This is not so surprising since mental processes are influenced by

language, while, conversely, language structures to a certain extent reflect cognitive

processes, that is the working of the mind.

In case this sounds intimidating – which it isn’t meant to be – help is at hand. Firstly, we

as lecturers are aware that writing is a skill that isn’t acquired overnight: we are all still

learning and few of us like to be reminded of our first efforts. This is reflected in our marking.

But in order to improve you should read our comments carefully and try to take them on

board: they are not designed to ‘tell you off’, but to help you progress. Furthermore, the good

news is that, to a large extent, essay-writing can be learned; following the ground rules below

may make the plunge easier! Before I go into details, however, here’s the most important

rule: the best way of learning to write is to read. The publications we cite in our reading lists

should normally be good models: try to emulate them (not slavishly of course). This may also

teach you how to read more critically: you have probably been taught to distil the contents of

books and articles; now try also to analyse how they are structured, how authors present the

material to make their points, how they write, and how they cite. This skill may lead you to

revise your opinion of certain publications, and this may in turn come in handy when it comes

to demonstrate your personal judgement of which I spoke above.

The Writing Stages: Before You Start, in the Middle, and After You Have Finished

Let us imagine you have done all your research (normally the research and writing phases

overlap because your writing may take you in unexpected directions – which is generally a

good sign – or you discover that you are unclear about certain aspects, but let’s leave all that

aside): how do you start writing? For most people it is not advisable to start writing the actual

text straightaway, but first to produce drafts. This can take the form of keywords that reflect

the structure of the argument, an abstract presenting the whole of the essay in a compressed

version, or a mind map which represents key issues and their interrelations graphically.

Experiment with these or other ways of sketching the basic ideas to find out what works best

for you. In any case, it is almost always better to have a clear idea of what you want to say

before you start writing – even if you revise your ideas at a later stage (that’s generally a

good sign too!).

When you think you know what you want, start writing. It is important to note that you do

not have to start with the very beginning; in fact, most writers write their introductions last so

they know what it is they introduce (personally, I generally prefer starting with the introduction

as it forces me to clarify what I’m really after). Whatever you start with, remember that you

can always revise, reorder or erase what you write – and rigorously do so if you don’t find it

satisfactory! Word processors have made this a lot easier. Particularly if you suffer from

writer’s block, it may help you to know that whatever you write is only provisional. You may

also want to start with what you are most certain about.

The third phase after planning and writing is revising. In my experience, students greatly

underestimate the importance of this. At this stage, you have to be very hard on yourself:

read your own text very carefully, always asking yourself whether you have actually written

what you wanted to, whether this is the best way of expressing it, whether your text is

consistent and the order of the material reflects the stages of your argument, whether

syntactical structures used exist and whether they mean what you think they do, whether

words used mean what you think they do, and so forth. It is always useful to give your essay

to a friend to read (to avoid academic misconduct, this friend should not take the same

course and should not comment on the actual subject matter). If you think that this is taking

friendship too far, how about exchanging essays? If you are not quite happy with your text,

try to analyse what is wrong (this may not be easy) and rectify it. Obviously, time is limited,

but in your planning always leave some space for rigorous revision. I sometimes spend more

time revising and rewriting a text than it has taken me to write it in the first place.

What is important about these three phases is that they overlap. While you are writing you

will almost inevitably amend some of your initial assumptions. As I mentioned above, this is a

good sign because it shows that writing helps you develop your thoughts. However, you may

have to go back to your planning phase and reconsider what the consequences of your new

line of argument are. Moreover, you may also have to revise some of your earlier text as this

was written with an argument in mind that you have since altered. Therefore, always ask

yourself whether what you have just written really continues to serve the function in relation

to your argument that you originally had in mind (e.g. illustrating, supporting or challenging

it). This implies that, just as you are going back to the drawing board while writing, you are

also already revising. Obviously you should try not to be too obsessive and labour endlessly

on your first paragraph – on the contrary, it is often a better idea to keep going and see that

you ‘find your way in’ – but analysing your own writing is never a bad idea.

This may all sound more complex than it really is: the chances are that you are already

working in this way – perhaps without being aware of it – and it will come quite naturally with

more practice. Nevertheless, it needs saying as a mismatch between the ostensible

argument of an essay and the evidence cited to support it is a fairly common flaw. A system

of checks and balances between the three writing phases should ensure an argument that

appears to flow naturally. Needless to say, this process takes some time, so don’t leave

things for the last minute! This does not mean that you are going to spend more time writing:

on the contrary, if anything, a well-planned and properly drafted essay will make for easier

and more fluent writing. But ideas need time to mature.

Structure and Argument

In the following, I present some basic hints for the construction of essays, starting with the

hierarchically highest level, that of the whole essay, and moving successively downwards to

the smallest unit, that of the individual word.

The most common flaw in students’ essays is the lack of a central proposition. The result

is often a conglomeration of perfectly useful insights and observations which, however, do

not add up to something like a coherent picture. If you are not quite sure about what you

actually want to say, how can you say it well? Hence, from your researching the topic and

planning the essay, always think about what your hypothesis is going to be (it can happen

that you only really find this while writing, in which case you may have to go over what you

have written as mentioned in the previous section). This presents problems for some

students because they are not used to developing their own views. Apparently, schools tend

to train pupils not to express their individual opinion, but instead summarise other people’s

arguments as neutrally and objectively as possible. By contrast, while you need to be able to

do this, we are also interested in your own ideas, and you should aim to communicate these

in your essays. These views do not have to be ‘balanced’: they can be passionate and even

polemical – provided you can support them through rational argument and proper use of

evidence.

If you have an hypothesis, the structuring of your text will seem quite natural: you first

state the problem and introduce your hypothesis (if you don’t want to save it for later), then,

in the middle section, you cite the evidence supporting it – also mentioning possible counter-

arguments – before concluding on how the evidence supports your proposition. What you get

is a three-part structure with an introduction, a main body containing the evidence and most

of the argument, and a conclusion. This is often summarised as ‘say what you are going to

say, say it, and say what you have just said’. This sounds inane, and, if you follow the recipe

too slavishly, it is, but more often than not, this structure works remarkably well (you can find

out yourself if you think about how many of the articles you find convincing use this structure:

that’s what I meant when I said that reading is a good guide for writing!).

Another important advantage of having a central argument is that it orders your material in

arguments for and against, as well as in more important and less important points. Without

such a proposition, a fact is just a fact, and there are any number of them and all seem

equally important. Consequently, essays lacking a clear proposition often suffer from a

multitude of scarcely related facts scattered among the text whose relevance and function is

often unclear. Therefore one of the ground rules is: only cite the material that is related to

your proposition and subject matter. Essays are not primarily about showing how much you

know, and additional information can be confusing if there does not seem to be a reason why

it is mentioned.

Even if you have a central proposition and a clear overall structure, it may sometimes be

necessary to guide your readers through the argument. You may know how any given

passage relates to the overall argument, but for a reader this is not always clear. Therefore,

ask yourself whether the relation of any given passage to the whole is clear and, if not, draw

the necessary connections. If, for instance, writing about the relation between the publishing

trade and the evolution of sonata form in Beethoven’s time, you want to include a passage

about the increasing importance of domestic music-making among the burgeoning middle

classes, you could include something like this: ‘the relation between such social conditions

as the rise of the middle classes on one hand and changes in musical form on the other may

not be entirely evident at first sight. However,...’; or: ‘while the influence of commercial

publishers has been duly noted, the importance of the greater availability of affordable pianos

for the new middle classes has often been overlooked’. This should ensure that readers

know why you are mentioning these things. Sometimes it may be useful to foreshadow your

argument so your readers know where they are: this is what I did at the beginning of this

chapter. This approach can seem a little over-didactic and inelegant, but sometimes it is

helpful.

If you find it hard to develop a clear structure – many do – you may want to include sub-

headings. Sub-headings force you to stick with a topic for a while and deal with only one

issue at a time (in too many essays one gets the impression that students are writing about

everything and nothing all the time). In the example I used above, the sub-heading could be,

for instance, ‘The Rise of the Middle Classes and the Piano Trade’; but you can also use

generic sub-headings such as ‘Introduction’ or ‘Conclusion’. Sometimes you may want to

erase your sub-headings at a later stage just as you would dismantle a scaffolding after the

actual edifice has been built. In other cases, you may find that the sub-headings help readers

to orient themselves too – this is why I use sub-headings for the present text. As with

different methods for planning and drafting a text, what works best for you depends on the

subject matter and on what kind of writer you are: experiment with it.

Language Use and Style

As with all aspects of writing and language, there is no one ‘correct’ style; individual

variations are not only inevitable but also desirable. If there is a general rule, however, it is to

aim for a relatively simple, clear and factual style. Colloquialisms, florid prose (beware of liner

and programme notes!) and emotive or emphatic language are best avoided, unless for

special expressive purposes (and these should be rare). It is best to get used to different

registers of language: the language you use on a Friday night at the club is normally

inappropriate in academic contexts, but the style you use in an essay shouldn’t be a foreign

language to you either, as it easily sounds stilted otherwise. While language use is an

expression of individuality, it does not follow that only one style can be yours: we all use

different languages in different circumstances. As with other matters, follow the example of

recommended books that you like and consider our suggestions.

‘Flow’

If your essay has a clear argument and is well-structured, it should be easy to read.

However, some texts are still somewhat clunky, and this often has to do with the connections

between sentences and paragraphs – or rather the lack of them. First of all, you should use

the sentence as a unit thoughtfully: make the full stop your friend! Quite often, one comes

across passages that look as if the material as been poured over the paper without being first

divided into ‘edible chunks’. Separate your material into units of information and group these

into sentences (this seems obvious, but isn’t always easy). If you find this hard, the chances

are that you haven’t thought enough about your material and therefore don’t know which are

the important bits and which are only supplementary. Sometimes it helps rearranging

different phrases to form new sentences.

If you have your sentences, these may need to be linked to one another. On the simplest

level, a sentence is a statement of fact, but lining up statements of fact does not produce an

argument. The question is how sentences relate to one another. As far as I am aware, there

are four basic types which account for most relations between successive sentences, the first

three of which are particularly important in academic writing: a sentence may, firstly, add to

the preceding one, secondly, illustrate it or follow from it, thirdly, refute it (or seemingly so),

and fourthly, introduce a different time level. All these relations can be expressed through

conjunctions (or adverbs used as conjunctions), normally introduced at the beginning of the

second sentence, as follows:

1. If a sentence supports the preceding one and adds to it (consecutive, the ‘and-type’):

Furthermore; Moreover; Additionally/In addition to that; Besides, And (this was generally

not sanctioned by traditional style manuals, and for good reason, but is now quite

accepted).

2. If a sentence illustrates the preceding one or follows logically from it (causal, the ‘so-

type’):

Thus; Hence; Therefore; Consequently/As a consequence; Accordingly; As a result; So

(somewhat colloquial)

3. If a sentence refutes the preceding one or presents a counter-argument (the ‘but-type’):

However; Yet; Nevertheless/Nonetheless; By contrast; Though; But (like ‘and’ this is not

traditional)

4. If the action of the sentence precedes or succeeds that of the preceding sentence

(temporal: this is usually unproblematic)

Before; After; etc.

Using these conjunctions judiciously may sometimes be enough to transform a stodgy

passage into a nicely flowing one. Moreover (!), this helps you to analyse your own writing: if

you cannot decide which of these relations fits your passage, the meaning of the sentences

may be unclear. As a rule, though, conjunctions should not be overused as this can make a

text appear pedantic and over-written.

Paragraphs are used to bundle information into more easily consumable parcels. There

are no particular rules for this, but if your paragraphs are consistently one sentence or a

whole page long, the reason may lie in your not organising your material properly.

Sentence Structure

Syntax is a perennial problem for many students and one that should have been dealt with at

school level (the same is true of punctuation which I can’t deal with here: there’s an excellent

guide by Larry Trask on the web:

<http://www.informatics.sussex.ac.uk/department/docs/punctuation/node00.html>). While

good grammar takes a lot of practice, observing some basic principles may make a

difference. It would be going too far to enumerate all possible sentence structures in English;

these are listed in grammars (such as John Eastwood, Oxford Guide to English Grammar

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994)) and style manuals. You should be aware, however,

that there aren’t all that many different constructions, and it is well worth being acquainted

with them so you can use them deliberately. Syntactical structures reflect logical and

temporal relations between different clauses. If what you are trying to say doesn’t fit into any

of those, then maybe you are unclear about how the different things you want to say are

related to one another (this is the main reason why clarity of language may signify clarity of

thought – in the absence of disabilities such as dyslexia).

Apart from interpolated clauses and relative clauses, which do not normally cause great

problems, the relations between different clauses within a sentence are normally the same

as between different sentences which I dealt with above. Being aware of this may make it

easier to survey the jungle of syntactic structures. There are also alternative structures for

practically all the major types of sub- or coordinated clauses. See, for instance, different

versions of the ‘but-type’ which all produce a slightly different emphasis (although not all

work equally well, ‘whereas’ and ‘while’ – normally also yielding similar meanings – don’t

seem to work at all):

1. His string quartets are among Béla Bartók’s best-remembered works, but he himself was

a pianist.

2. Although he was a pianist himself, Bartók’s string quartets reveal a rare mastery of the

genre.

3. Bartók’s string quartets are milestones of the genre; however, he was a pianist himself.

4. Bartók never played a string instrument; nevertheless his string quartets rank among his

finest works.

5. Despite being a pianist himself, Bartók’s string quartet writing shows great sensitivity for

instrumental techniques.

6. Bartók’s string quartets are admirable creations, especially considering/given that he

was a pianist himself.

Note too that in most cases the two phrases can also be exchanged (although this is a little

awkward in this case), producing yet another emphasis in meaning: ‘Béla Bartók was a

pianist by training; however, his string quartets are among his finest works’. It is best to get

used to juggle around sentences in this manner, and many of you will already do so; it

becomes an automatic process after a while. In any case, never just write what comes into

your head first: always take care to construct proper sentences that communicate your

meaning! Again, this may mean that you need more time than you have originally envisaged.

For an inexperienced writer, a rushed essay will never be a good essay.

Spelling and Word Use

At this stage, I can only give you some ground rules:

Always use a spell check. Consistently faulty orthography is unnecessary and will be

penalised. However, using a spell check does not free you from ‘manual’ proof-reading.

Use a dictionary. Imprecise or wrong word use is very common in student essays. For

technical terms, use the Grove dictionary (which can be accessed online under

grovemusic.com – use ‘sussexuni’ as username and ‘oxford’ as password if you’re off-

campus, or through the electronic library: <http://www.sussex.ac.uk/library/electronic>).

Imprecise or erroneous use of terminology can devalue your whole essay and can easily

be avoided.

Use a thesaurus. If you find yourself constantly using the same words or not quite

finding the right ones, see what alternatives you find in a thesaurus. For Microsoft Word

users the Word thesaurus can be accessed by highlighting a word and pressing Shift+F7

(it’s not as good as a proper thesaurus, but much faster. I use it all the time).

Related to that, a note on repetition: you have probably been taught to avoid repeating

words. This is generally a sound rule. However, if you cannot find a proper alternative to

the word you are using, better stick to that, lest your text becomes vague and imprecise.

If the choice is between a lack of elegance and imprecision, opt for the former!

Furthermore, you can and should of course repeat technical terms and terms you are

writing about (see, for instance, how often I repeat the word ‘essay’ in the introduction to

this text: I don’t see this as a problem, and choosing synonyms would have been less

clear). Technical terms have been coined precisely because there is no other way to

unequivocally refer to the matter at hand.

Apostrophes: this is a major stumbling block for many students. However, there really

are just a handful of rules in English for using them. If you are unsure, look them up in a

grammar book or on Larry Trask’s punctuation guide

(<http://www.informatics.sussex.ac.uk/department/docs/punctuation/node00.html>).

Foreign names and titles: make sure you copy these correctly; it does matter! Also use

diacritics such as accents and umlauts where appropriate (these can be accessed

through the ‘insert’ menu of your word processor). It is ‘Götterdämmerung’, not

‘Gotterdammerung’; ‘Bartók’, not ‘Bartok’; ‘Pelléas et Mélisande’, etc.

Citing and Quoting

This is a major part of any essay since you want to demonstrate that your text is the outcome

of research and not simply conjecture and opinion. What many students are unaware of is

that all use of sources has to be acknowledged; otherwise it technically counts as plagiarism

(even if you do not quote verbatim)! The only exception to this rule is when what you say can

be considered common knowledge (e.g. ‘Beethoven was one of the most influential

composers of the early nineteenth century’). Phrases such as ‘it is often said that...’ or

‘Beethoven is often considered...’ do not free you from giving examples of who or what you

refer to.

There are three main ways of using written material: firstly, as factual background

information, secondly, by paraphrasing it, and thirdly, by quoting it. The Beethoven example

used above may illustrate the use of background information. Say, you give a factual

introduction to the works written in Beethoven’s ‘middle period’. In this case you make a

footnote at the end of the passage mentioning your source(s) (for instance: ‘see Dahlhaus,

Beethoven...‘ or ‘cf. Dahlhaus...’).

Paraphrases are mostly used when the specific source is important, for instance, when

you are dealing with matters of interpretation rather than fact. If, for example, you want to

refer to an author’s characterisation of the most common sonata forms of Beethoven’s

‘middle period’, you may say something like ‘according to Rosen,...’ and summarise Rosen’s

views in your own words, followed again by a footnote specifying the source. Formulations

like this are among the most common in scholarly literature.

You should only quote verbatim if the exact wording is important. An example would be:

‘Abbé Dubos’s famous exclamation “Sonata, what do you want from me?” aptly characterises

the low status of instrumental music in early eighteenth-century France’. Short quotations like

this should be integrated into your text, using quotation marks (not italics); phrases such as

‘according to Tyson,...’ (this works for both paraphrase and quotation), ‘as Kramer puts it,...’,

or ‘in the words of Keller,...’ can be useful for this purpose. Longer quotations – from around

sixty words or four lines – are normally separated from the main text through indentation

(without quotation marks or italics). In these cases you cannot integrate the quotation into

your own sentence structure. Instead you need to introduce it, for instance by using such

formulations as ‘Burney characterises the Rondo from Beethoven’s Op. 31 thus:’, or ‘Adorno,

by contrast, regards it as a critique on the conventions of rondo finales, as in the following

passage:’. In all cases, you will of course have to name the exact source. Note, however,

that literal quotations are actually quite rare in scholarly literature; students, on the other

hand, almost always quote too much and cite too little.

Formatting and Bibliographic References

There are different ways of citing someone else’s work. The most common is to make a

footnote which contains the name of the author; the title of the publication; place, name of

publisher and year of publication; and the page number(s) – in that order (for more general

references page numbers may not be necessary, but if you do refer to a specific passage,

you have to name them – this is always the case in literal quotations). Remember that in

titles everything except grammatical words are normally capitalised, and that titles of

independent publications (e.g. books, journals, dictionaries, but not articles) are usually

italicised (or underlined). There are differences between different kinds of publications. A

book is referenced in the following way:

David Metzer, Quotation and Cultural Meaning in Twentieth-Century Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 54-67.

In the case of journal articles the title of the article is normally in single quotation marks, and

the title of the journal is italicised – place and name of publisher are not necessary for

journals, but the volume is:

Michael Hicks, ‘Text, Music, and Meaning in the Third Movement of Luciano Berio’s Sinfonia’, Perspectives of New Music 20 (1981-1982), 199-224.

Chapters in a volume of articles are referenced in a similar way to journal articles:

Krin Gabbard, ‘The quoter and his culture’, in Jazz in Mind: Essays in the History and Meanings of Jazz, ed. Reginald T. Buckner and Stephen Weitland (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1991), 92-111.

An entry in a dictionary is referred to in a similar way, at least when the author is named (e.g.

in the Grove; there’s also a special link about how to cite the online version of the Grove on

grovemusic.com):

J. Peter Burkholder, ‘Borrowing’, in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd edn., ed. Stanley Sadie (London: MacMillan, 2001), vol. 4, 5-8.

If you have referred to the same publication before, you can reference in short form, e.g.

‘Metzer, Quotation, 78’.

At the end of your essay there should be a bibliography containing all the works you have

used (including those you have read but not mentioned). The individual entries can have the

same format as your footnotes. However, they have to be in alphabetical order (as regards

the authors’ last names). Therefore you may prefer to put the last name before the Christian

names, e.g. Metzer, David, Quotation...

Specific titles of musical works are italicised, whereas generic titles are simply capitalised:

Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 (but Beethoven’s Pastoral

Symphony). (For more music-specific formats refer to Holoman’s Writing about Music).

Online Sources

The internet has become a formidable research tool, and it contains a wealth of useful

information on most topics. In terms of research materials, the ‘internet’ actually falls into two

parts. The first is ‘professional’ material written by qualified experts which has often migrated

from traditional printed sources to the internet or – as in many journals – is available in either

medium. This kind of material is often not freely available, but can be accessed through the

university’s electronic library; among them are the online Grove, the RILM (a professional

music bibliography), and online journals (with search functions). Generally, these sources

can be used like traditional library resources although the methods are obviously different.

The library has compiled a good list of music-specific resources at

<http://www.sussex.ac.uk/library/subjects/music.php> (the list of openly available web

resources is very short, but the amount available has simply become unmanageable).

The second part is the ‘open’ part of the web, that is freely available material, and this has

to be used with caution. The first rule is that web research can complement traditional library

research, but it does not replace it: the average university library still holds a lot more

academically relevant material on most topics than the internet. Examiners will always spot

whether you’ve done proper research or have just made a google search, and in the latter

case they will penalise your work for being under-researched. The second rule is that online

sources need to be referenced in the same way as other materials (for formatting see below);

otherwise this will constitute plagiarism! The third problem is that internet sources are often

unreliable. While you cannot believe everything that’s been printed, usually there are some

safeguards and quality controls in publishing. By contrast, everyone can put up stuff on the

web: why do you assume that the writer of an online document knows more than you, since

you could have published the material yourself? So, always try to find independent

confirmation for information gleaned from the web – and this does usually not mean other

websites, since online authors tend to plagiarise one another (there is a proliferation of

misinformation on the web). Very often online sources are more useful at the beginning of

the research process than in later stages. A case in point is the (in)famous

<http://www.wikipedia.org>. Many lecturers ban usage of wikipedia altogether: I don’t find

this attitude helpful as it is undeniably a fantastic resource which I frequently use myself. But

it’s much more useful for first delineating your research topic, identifying bibliographic

sources etc., and all information has to be double-checked. Moreover, for music-related

issues (e.g. composers, terms) you should always use the Grove: if you are using wikipedia,

rather than a reputable source, for such issues as biographical data or musical terminology,

you will always be penalised unless no other source is readily available.

The third issue is that proper web research takes at least as much time as traditional

library research and is not easy. Many students seem to be content with whatever comes up

first after an ordinary google (rather than google books or scholar google) search, with scant

regard to the quality of the material or its relevance for their topic. You often have to trawl

through loads of pages and make dozens of searches using different search terms and

search engines before finding something that is genuinely useful. Again, the library has

compiled a very helpful list of tutorials on online (and traditional) research at

<http://www.sussex.ac.uk/library/subjects/onlinetutorials.html>. There are now hundreds of

pages on practically every canonic work; but given anyone – including other students – can

have written them and that they could be on any aspect of the work, what makes you think

that anything anybody may have written on a piece you’re working on is worth citing? So use

online sources with great discrimination.

Finally, some notes on referencing of online sources. Remember that the basic point of

referencing is that a reader can find and identify the exact material you have been using. So

you have to name the complete URL (‘internet address’); the easiest way is to copy-paste it

from your browser. It has become the norm to delineate URLs with ‘<’ and ‘>’ symbols as I

have done throughout this text, and a URL normally starts with ‘http://’, not with ‘www’. Since

online content changes notoriously quickly you also have to include the date when you last

accessed your source. Take wikipedia as an example again: the moment your reader checks

an entry you have referred to, this may – and often does! – say something completely

different from what you are suggesting, so it is worth pointing out when the document said

what you claim it did.

Here’s an example:

Shoemaker, Bill. review of Uri Caine: Live at the Village Vanguard, Downbeat,

<http://www.downbeat.com/review_detail.asp?rid=850> (accessed 27 July 2006).

Note that I’ve provided the author and a short description of the contents. That

isn’t always possible (many web sources are anonymous) or appropriate, and the

second line would often suffice. In bibliographies it is not uncommon to have a

separate section for web resources (their ordering is difficult), but where you know

the authors it is also possible to integrate web resources into a conventional

bibliography.

The online Grove has a link about how to cite it at

<http://www.grovemusic.com/shared/views/help.html?topic=H090> (accessed 22 July

2007). There can be a little variation as you may use a slightly different format in the

rest of your text, but the general issues are fine.