MUS M402. Guidelines for writing analytical papers

1. Make a point. Find something you want to say about the material, state it in the first paragraph, and stick to it. Make sure you end up in the same place that you start.

2. Organize your paper around your point. Present musical evidence to support it. Exclude extraneous material, however fascinating.

3. Write in well-organized paragraphs that have clear roles in your argument.

4. Start with the assigned music, do some analysis, and then find a point. Go back and round up the evidence that supports your point, find more if necessary, and discard everything else.

5. Make an outline and write from it. When you have completed a draft, re-outline it from the text to see if its logic is still clear.

6. Do not narrate or simply describe music—make an analytical point about it. Use a diagram if you need to convey the order of events in a piece.

7. In an analytical paper, avoid the temptation of writing about music history or the composer's life, or of giving a capsule history of the genre, or of making sweeping claims about music in general. Write about the piece at hand.

8. Write in musical terms—avoid subjective or purely descriptive terms. Write in plain English, though; don't clutter the paper with unnecessary jargon.

9. Edit. Read your paper aloud. Choose every word carefully. Jettison each unnecessary word.

10. Proofread.

11. Give your paper an interesting title. Do not be cute, or clever, or cryptic; be interesting.