Writing for

Music

WRITING SERVICES - UNCW - DEPAOLO HALL, 1ST FLOOR - 962-7857

Basics

Style manual: Turabian A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and

Dissertations, Seventh Edition,, 7th ed. & How to Write About Music: The RILM Manual

of Style, 2nd

ed.

Music style guide: Writing About Music: A Style Sheet by D. Kern Holoman

Style Basics Spell out notes, keys, and chords

Use a hyphen in adjectival forms

Italicize foreign words unless they are familiar in English usage

Titles:

o Italicize titles of operas, motets, tone poems, and long musical compositions

o Put titles of songs and short compositions in quotation marks

o Capitalize titles that are generic terms

o Capitalize movement titles

o Italicize specific titles given by the composer

o Put names of individual movements from larger compositions in quotation marks

Basic Format/Organization of a Paper

Introduction

Body

Footnotes/Endnotes

Bibliography

Suggested Databases

Arts and Humanities Citation Index

Classical Music Library

Contemporary World Music

ERIC (vis EBSCOHost)

IIPA Full Text

Links for Handout References

Turabian Style, 7th

ed.

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/books/turabian/manual/index.html

RILM

http://www.bartleby.com/141/index.html

Writing About Music: A Style Sheet, D. Kern Holoman (1st Chapter available online)

http://www.ucpress.edu/content/chapters/2266001.ch01.pdf

Western Libraries resources for citing music sources

http://www.lib.uwo.ca/music/citemus.html

A Guide for the Preparation of Music Papers, UNCG

http://performingarts.uncg.edu/sites/default/files/mus-guide-rev-f2011.pdf