Music: Style Guide(s) for Music
Music Research Portal
What is a Writing Style Guide and Why Use it?
- Style guides are used in academic writing as a shared language to create consistency across a wide variety of writing endeavors. Style guides are often connected to disciplines and the scholarly journals for that discipline: the American Psychological Association, for example, is the creator of the APA style guide.
- In the discipline of music, the general style guides most often used are APA (Music Education and Music Therapy) and Chicago (Musicology and other sub-disciplines). Chicago and APA will be discussed in this guide on the citations page.
- In the meantime, below, you'll find some writing style guides specifically for using when you write about music. They will help you be consistent with not only the mechanics of writing musical terms--is "Opus" capitalized?--but will give you insights into the regular types of music writing such as program notes.
Music-specific Style Guides
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Writing about Music by
Call Number: ML3797 .W75 2014, McKay Music LibraryISBN: 0520281535Publication Date: 2014-09-05This guide is used for writing classes in the School of Music. It includes style information for narrative text, as well as programs and program notes.
Where do you place the hyphen in "Beethoven" if it breaks between two lines? How do you cite John Coltrane’s album A Love Supreme? Is it "premiere" or "première"? The answers and much more can be found in this definitive resource for authors, students, editors, concert producers--anyone who deals with music in print. Extending the principles devised for the classical repertoires, this revised and expanded edition now includes examples from world music, rock, jazz, popular music, and cinema. This essential volume covers some of the thorniest issues of musical discourse: how to go about describing musical works and procedures in prose, the rules for citations in notes and bibliography, and proper preparation of such materials as musical examples, tables, and illustrations. One section discusses program notes, while others explain the requirements for submitting manuscripts and electronic files, and outline best practices for student writers. An appendix lists common problem words. Updates include greatly simplified citations of Internet locators, the recognition of multiple platforms, and the expectation of paperless transmission and storage of work. Cited as the authority by The Chicago Manual of Style, this classic handbook is the go-to source for anyone writing about music.
Writing about Music by Call Number: ML3797 .W54 2009, McKay LibraryISBN: 9780136157786Publication Date: 2007-12-29Helping users write clear, convincing, persuasive prose on musical topics, this practical guide focuses on general writing issues as well as special challenges of writing about music-with clear, step-by-step explanations of the process of writing a paper. Updated to reflect the latest research methodology, resources, and technology, it continues to offer strong coverage on research, organization, drafting and editing-and includes a thorough section on basic writing skills. KEY TOPICS: Contains complete chapters on writing about music, analysis and research, getting started, writing a research paper (from choosing a topic through outlining, writing the draft, editing and revising), questions of format, other kinds of writing projects (i.e., seminar presentations, concert reports, program notes), writing styles, and common writing problem. Covers the latest musicological research and new resources for researching both print and electronic publications. Discusses writing papers on a PC, and provides a sample paper in the appendix that illustrates matters of format and discusses the events in the musical work. MARKET: For writers.
Music in words: a guide to researching and writing about music by Call Number: ML3797 .H537 2009, McKay and ONLINEISBN: 9786612053887Publication Date: 2009ow to write : some basics for shorter writing tasks -- Doing research : a basic method for longer projects -- Using libraries and the Internet -- Scholarly documentation : citing sources -- Using illustrations : notated music, pictures, tables, and other visual representations -- Language and numbers -- Some musical terms and phrases -- Sources and research tools -- Citations I : the printed word and its electronic equivalents -- Citations II : musical sources -- Citations III : other sources
McKay Music Library Director
Lisa Chaufty
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Contact:
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Subjects: Music
