3: Writing essays and dissertations; bibliography
3: Writing essays and dissertations; bibliography
 

The ability to write clear and accurate prose is probably the most important of generic academic skills. It is an essential and fundamental method for communicating ideas. The language, spelling, punctuation and presentation you choose will create a deep impression on tutors, examiners, employers, friends and colleagues. Effective writing need not be complicated and the conventions of style and presentation are not difficult to assimilate. This section of the handbook and the associated teaching should help you develop your writing skills.
 

3.1 Introduction

At all three undergraduate levels you will write essays as part of your coursework and assessments. You will have written essays before you came here but as an undergraduate you need to make a considerable advance on your previous work.
        These notes are intended to help you to see what is required, suggesting certain procedures and ways of thinking that may or may not seem obvious to you. Our aim is to help you communicate more effectively--to write in a style that makes your meaning more immediately apparent and to do so with the minimum wastage of time and energy.
 

3.2 Scope of the essay

You must assume that there is a fairly obvious correlation between the title you are given to write on and the word-limit within which you are expected to work. Most of us want to expand our ideas and when we set out to write (say) a 2,000-word essay we feel frustrated because we cannot write what we want to say in so few words. Do recognise a vital principle here: that you are expected to tackle the subject properly in the word-limit given, this is part of the discipline involved in the exercise. "Real life" often makes similar demands.
 

3.3 Some practical considerations

It is best to word-process your essay. Otherwise, make sure your manuscript is clear, regular and legible. Do not use your own shorthand and be careful with letters that can open out or close up to look like something else (e.g., "d" and "cl", which can be confused).
        Use one side of the paper only. In handwritten essays, use double spacing; when material is printed, use double or 1.5 spacing. Give some thought to the style of presentation as this can make a great difference to your reader. In particular:
 

If the omission continues to the end of the sentence (as the second example does here), use four dots.
 

3.4 Keeping to the word limit: questions of style

Keeping to the word limit does not imply the omission of relevant material. There are effective and wasteful ways of saying what has to be said.
        Get on with the subject in hand: you need only the briefest of introductions. If you are writing on, for example, the descriptive music in the Royal Hunt and Storm scene of The Trojans you need not discuss the history of programme music, the question of descriptive music in opera, or the biography of Hector Berlioz. These may have figured in lectures, and certainly they are necessary background for your work. But background, however necessary to your learning about the topic (and accepting that you may need to refer in your essay to specific background facts), is not required by your reader.
        Do not use metaphor unless you are absolutely sure that it has a function that cannot be discharged in a better way. It is easy to write down a metaphor that seems to mean something but really does not (or, worse, means something else). Avoid flowery language. What we tend to think of as "literary" language often clouds the issue: for instance, it is silly to say that something is "shrouded in mystery" when we simply mean that we don't know the answer; and it is misleading to describe something as "simplistic" if we just mean "simple". Similarly avoid cheap clichés that are used loosely in everyday speech. For instance, you need not introduce the last in a series as "last but not least". The same applies to meaningless "fill-in" language, such as "and so on, and so forth".
        Any sentence that is more than three lines long should normally be rewritten. The most likely problems in such a sentence are:

(a) You have included too many facts or ideas, or simply too many words, for the reader to assimilate the sentence easily. (It is silly to make your reader's life more difficult than it need be.)

(b) The sentence presents your ideas in a confused (and confusing) way. It is often better to re-cast a sentence as two sentences, with the ideas clearly presented in proper order.

(c) You have used too many words to say something. It is nearly always possible to cut words out in this case, although you may have to rethink the syntax. Get out your red pen and CUT. The meaning is usually clearer when you have finished.


Remember, always, that good style is not a matter of decoration; it depends most of all on clarity of expression.

 

3.5 Authority and plagiarism

Unless the sources of information and ideas used in an essay or dissertation are common currency among scholars, you must acknowledge your debt. The usual way is to write a footnote number in the text, with a footnote to match it at the bottom of the page, giving the basic bibliographical reference: author, title, place, publisher and date of publication, and relevant page-number(s).
        This reference is especially important when you actually quote someone else's words. If you do this is in the body of the text, with no indication that the words are not your own, you have committed plagiarism. This is discussed in more detail below, in section 11. Meanwhile, avoid plagiarism by referencing your work and by making sure that quotations of someone else's work are clearly identified as such.

        There are two ways of showing that a passage is a quotation:

i) A brief quotation (under 100 words) can be enclosed in " ... ". The quotation must be incorporated syntactically into your own sentence, so make sure that the resulting sentence is grammatically correct.

ii) Longer quotations should be set as a block indented left and right. Do not use quotation marks around such a quotation: the reader recognises it as a quotation from the indenting.
 
 

3.6 Syntax and grammar

In the course of speaking to other people we often say things that are ungrammatical. Unfortunately we have become used to phrases like "between you and I", which is on a level with "Me and him's been to the shops" and ought not to be used. Such poor speech need not matter: if we realise that we have been ambiguous we can rephrase the remark, and on many occasions our meaning is clear even if the words themselves are nonsense. A sentence like "The analysis of classical symphonies are not always easy" is clearly erroneous, but there is no doubt about the intended meaning. This does not make the error acceptable, however: and, whatever may be forgivable in speech, such things should never be written.
 

3.7 Some common errors

Try to avoid the following misuses (they are now widespread, which does not make them acceptable; they may cause unnecessary difficulties for your reader if you allow them into your essays):

(i) Of spelling

compliment = comment of approval (noun), or to make such a comment (verb)

complement = complete load or holding (noun), to offer what is missing elsewhere (verb)

practice is the noun (Do your piano practice!)

practise is the verb (I practise the piano)

(However, Americans use practice for both of these.)

principal = chief, main, primary (adjective, or noun as in "the College Principal")

principle = a fundamental tenet, or a course of action or belief deliberately adopted (noun)

their = belonging to them; there = in that place

it's = it is; its = belonging to it (Tell me its time signature) (Its' does not exist.)
 

(ii) Of punctuation

        Be clear about your use of the apostrophe: an apostrophe either replaces a missing letter or denotes possession. Its (i.e. belonging to it) is the ONLY exception, necessary in order to differentiate from the contraction it's (i.e. it is). So:

Handel's harpsichord (the harpsichord belongs to Handel).

        Where, somewhat conversationally, Handel's playing his harpsichord might be written, the apostrophe denotes a missing a letter (in full, Handel is playing....), just as in Don't play that wretched sarabande again, George.
        If the person(s) or thing(s) doing the possessing are plural, then the apostrophe must be placed after the 's': the Bachs' harpsichord(s) (assuming that more than one of the Bachs shared instruments). Note that it doesn't matter how many harpsichords there are-they could share one or many. What is important is how many Bachs are being discussed. So, finally, J.S.Bach's harpsichord would be correct.
        From the above it is clear that the apostrophe should not be used to denote a plural with no possessive function: the Bachs couldn't stop writing keyboard music, not the Bach's....; the 1920s have been described as 'roaring'.
        Where a name ends in 's' anyway and is possessive, use the apostrophe as it sounds in speech: St. Thomas's church, Leipzig.

        It is sometimes difficult to decide whether to use a colon or a semicolon. It is often suggested that the semicolon should be regarded as an alternative for the conjunction "and", and the colon as an alternative for a causal conjunction like "for" or "thus".
        Commas, dashes and brackets can all be used parenthetically in order to separate a subordinate clause. With this armoury of devices-examples of which you will find in this Handbook-there should be no need, given adequate thought, to create ambiguity in your reader's mind with the repeated use of commas; similarly, over-long sentences (of which this is a particularly bad example) can be avoided.
 

(iii) Of grammar

        A sentence must have a main verb: "Having no key-signature" is not a sentence.
Two main clauses (i.e. with main verbs) must be joined by a conjunction, such as "and" or "but". "However" is not a conjunction. Otherwise, the clauses must be separated by at least a semicolon: a comma will not do.
        An initial adjectival phrase will normally refer to the subject of the sentence. The following is therefore nonsense: "Having no key-signature, Bach clearly thought of it as being in A minor" (Why should Bach have a key-signature?). This must be turned around:
        "Bach clearly thought that this piece, having no key-signature, was in A minor", or--perhaps better--"Bach clearly regarded this piece, which has no key-signature, as being in A minor".
        A clause or phrase in apposition (like "which has no key-signature" in the example above) must be separated by a comma at either end. The second comma is now often omitted, but this can be confusing or nonsensical.
        Remember that "each" is distributive, and takes a singular verb: "Each movement ends with a wind chord". "Both" is distributive, too--that is, what is said about one is also true of the other. "Both violins play a duet" means "The one violin plays a duet, and the other violin plays a duet", which suggests that they play different duets. What is probably intended is "The [two] violins play a duet".
 

(iv) Abbreviations

        Note that "i.e." stands for "id est" (that is), and is quite different from "e.g.", which stands for "exempla gratia" (for example). Do not confuse these: if in doubt, spell it out in English.
 

(v) Hyphens and dashes

        The hyphen is a short stroke that joins two words, usually into a complex adjective such as "out-of-date" or "well-intentioned". The result should have a single grammatical function: for instance, Tye was a sixteenth-century composer (composite adjective) who lived in the sixteenth century (not in the sixteenth-century: "sixteenth" is an adjective and "century" a noun).
        The hyphen is used also to mark the division in a word separated between lines of text. Note that there are no spaces between words and hyphen.
        The dash is used to separate off a phrase or clause that is either in apposition or requires separation--of a fairly informal nature, usually--for which other punctuation is not ideal. There are examples in section (ii), above. The dash is normally written as a single long stroke, as in the previous sentence, with no spaces: but a long hyphen with spaces on either side -- thus -- is sometimes used. However you write the dash, be consistent. Above all, do not confuse the dash and the hyphen, which will always make nonsense of the sentence concerned.
        The hyphen is also used to show a numerical range, such as 17-21. Because we think of this as "seventeen-to-twenty-one" it is sometimes assumed that the hyphen is equivalent to the word "to". This is intellectually sloppy, as the origins of linguistic changes usually are. The form "17-21", however we have to put it into words, signifies a single entity, a range that has no simple verbal equivalent. Such a clause as "Jackson lived in this house from 1825-1837" is misconceived, therefore (and, as it happens, both nonsensical and incomplete). This usage is fast becoming the norm, and you can hardly be forbidden to use it: but think twice before you do, and in any case avoid the feeble thinking that gave rise to it.
 
 

3.8 Bibliography

How to list a book:

Zaslaw, Neal. Mozart's Symphonies: Context, Performance Practice, Reception (Oxford University Press, 1989).

Note that the title is in ITALICS. In handwritten work, titles should be underlined.
 
 

How to list a section of a book:

Zaslaw, Neal. 'Performance Practice', Chapter 12 of Mozart's Symphonies: Context, Performance Practice, Reception (Oxford University Press, 1989, pp. 445-509).
 

There are slight variations used in reputable sources. For example:

Abraham, Gerald. Eight Soviet Composers. Oxford University Press, London, 1943.

or

Author [Initials and surname], Title, place, date.
 

and more fully, covering most eventualities:
 

Author [Initials and surname], Title, translator or transcriber [tr. or transc.], editor [ed.], edition [edn.], (Series title placed in parenthesis, with volume number in small roman numerals), number of volumes, place, date.
 
 

How to list a journal (periodical) article:

Eisen, Cliff. 'New Light on Mozart's "Linz" Symphony, K. 425'. Journal of the Royal
Musical Association 113 (1988), 81-96.

Note that the title of the section is in quotes and the book title or periodical title is in italics.
 
 

How to list a work with several authors:

As above, but list the authors in the order they appear on the publication, which need not necessarily be alphabetical order.
 
 

How to list a work with an editor

Boyd, Malcolm (ed.), Music and the French Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
 

An extract from the above:

Charlton, David: 'On redefinitions of "rescue opera"', in Boyd, Malcolm (ed.), Music and the French Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 169-188

Note here the article title contains quotes: quotes within quotes must be different (here double against standard single, but it could be the other way around). Both sets of quotes must be closed. The title of the article as it appears in the books has 'rescue opera'. My need to be consistent (single quotes as standard) compels me to misquote the title in this detail.

For an edited work, see music (below).
 
 

How to list a piece of music:

In a bibliography, treat it like a book.

Mozart, W.A. Le nozze di Figaro.
 

Usually the purpose of listing music is to define the edition or editions you are using.

Mozart, W.A. Le nozze di Figaro. Ed. Hermann Abert. Edition Eulenburg, n.d.

This would probably define it adequately. You could say: London, Zurich and New York: Eulenburg

Note: not Eulenberg.

n.d. means NO DATE

For most things the date can be found in the library catalogue, or in the book itself, on the back of the title page.
 
 

Music titles should appear in italics, unless they are generic:

For example:
        Beethoven's Third Symphony, Beethoven's Symphony No. 3 (generic)
but
        Beethoven's Eroica Symphony (characteristic title, non-generic)
 

Opera titles should be in italics; opera characters should not.

Extracts such as arias will normally appear in quotes:

        'In Mozart's Figaro, Figaro sings the aria "Non più andrai, farfallone amoroso".'

Strictly the opera is called Le nozze di Figaro (Figaro's Wedding or The Marriage of Figaro), but it is frequently abbreviated; the convention means you can tell whether I am writing about Figaro the character or Figaro the opera.
 

Footnotes
A truncated version of the full bibliographical reference is often given in a footnote. This is acceptable (and can save unnecessarily large footnote entries), as long as a complete citation appears in the bibliography. Superscript footnote numbers (square brackets can be used if your superscript is unavailable, e.g. [7]) should always appear at the end of a sentence after the full stop.
        You may come across the terms Ibid. (an abbreviation of ibidem) and Op. cit. (short for opere citato). The former simply means 'in the same place' and the latter 'in the work already quoted'. If you use these terms be careful that it is clear which work is referred to.


The most important factor is consistency: choose a format (a well-established one) and stick to it. Use your common sense where slight variations are unavoidable.




Web page by Simon Baines 1/5/98 s.g.baines@leeds.ac.uk