Writing Guidance

General Guidance | Style Guidance | Checklist

General Guidance

Write Clearly

Your first goal is clarity. Prefer simple and short sentences. Avoid long sentences with too many subordinate clauses, which only weaken your argument, result in confusion or ambiguity, and disrupt the flow of the text. If your writing is muddled, your reader is likely to assume that your thoughts are also muddled. Do not use ‘big’ words just for the sake of it. Shorter and the briefer words are often just as good, or better.

The following question can be very helpful when writing: ‘Can I say more clearly in fewer words?’

Maintain a Clear Line of Thought

Each essay, report, dissertation and commentary (etc.) should guide the reader from the main claims or issues raised in the introduction toward a conclusion. Develop a clear and logical line of thought, so that the reader is not side-tracked by irrelevant points. Your prose should be composed of paragraphs that are meaningfully connected to each other. While each paragraph examines and deals with one idea, the writing should flow along without interruption. In other words, a successful essay establishes the proposition effectively and flows in such a way that each point relates to the next.

The following questions can be very helpful when writing: ‘Have I already said this?’ ;  ‘Does this connect with the next idea/sentence?’

Know the Marking Criteria

Your Module Guide will specify the assessment criteria that will be used in marking any particular assignment. Do read those criteria. They will help clarify what your tutor will be looking for. If you have any questions about the criteria, ask your tutor.

Choose an Interesting and Clear Title

The title of your written assignments should be informative and act as a direct doorway to your area of research/debate/presentation. In the examples below, note that prepositions, articles, conjunctions (and, or, in, etc.) are not capitalised.

  • An Investigation into the…
  • An Evaluation of the Role of …
  • An Analysis of … within …
  • Narrative and Identity in …
  • The Rise of … in the …
  • A Comparative Study of … and …
  • Two Compositions by … and …
  • A Case Study of … in / during …
  • A Technological Perspective on … and the Portrayal of… in …
  • An Examination of the Factors Influencing …
  • The Impact of … in …
  • Subculture: Fact or Fiction?
  • The Revolving Door: A Study of…

Do not use the tutor-posed essay question as the title, unless you are so instructed — even if you were instructed to do this In secondary school. (In secondary school, some teachers will instruct students to use the question as a title to help focus the student on actually addressing the question.)

Use Previous Feedback

Remember to look at feedback on previous assignments to help you improve your current assignment.

Gift Yourself with Time to Edit and Polish Your Work

Be sure to plan your time to give yourself the opportunity to carefully edit and polish your work.

This is as important in writing as it is in a studio mix. Just as you need to let your ears have time to rest before you come back to the studio and finalise your mix, you need to give your mind a rest before you come back to do final editing of your own writing. Try do give yourself at least a 24-hour break before doing your final edit. Some things that seem brilliant at 2am after a marathon session may read (or sound) a lot less convincing a day or two later.

If you have trouble being objective enough to proof-read effectively, try reading your text aloud, having someone else read it to you, or have a computer speak it to you.

Remember to use a spell checker that is British-English (NOT American-English).

 

Style Guidance

Keep Your Verb Tenses Consistent

Try not to flip back and forth between past and present verb forms (tenses). If you know you have a problem with this, consider doing a proof-read pass of your work looking at this one issue only.

However, the assessment of historical roles and certain cultural legacies when drawing conclusions about the past can be expressed in the present tense. This is because your opinion exists in the present even though the evidence and data are taken from history.

Maintain an Objective and Formal Tone

In general your academic writing should aspire to be objective. Hence while the use of third person (‘one’, ‘he’, ‘she’, ‘it’, ‘they’ etc.) is encouraged, and the use of first- or-second person (‘I’, ‘me’, ‘we’, ‘you’, etc.) is discouraged.

Note that this does not mean that you cannot use first- or second-person. Indeed, sometimes it can help the writing flow much more naturally than if you completely avoid ‘I’, etc. If you do use first- or second-person, just be sure that this is not leading to indulgence in subjectivity.

It is certainly appropriate to use first-person perspective in forms of reflective writing, such as reports, reviews and write-ups on creative work. However, do not flip between first, second and third persons. Be consistent.

Use Active Voice

Choose active voice over passive voice. [Active: ‘The pianist played the piece’. Passive: ‘The piece was played by the pianist’.] This helps make your writing more lively and engaging.

Sometimes people use the passive voice to avoid saying ‘I’. For example: ‘The piece was mixed to a -2 dBFS peak RMS level’ rather than ‘I mixed the piece to a -2 dBFS peak RMS level. The second example, using ‘I’, is actually clearer, more direct, and actually tells us who did the task. This is one example of why complete avoidance of ‘I’, particularly in a document describing creative work and process, is not always appropriate.

 

Checklist for Assignments

These can be helpful to guide the final edits of your assignment.

General Checklist

  • The assignment clearly addresses all aspects of the assignment brief. (Go back an look carefully at the brief again, to be sure.)
  • The document fulfils the formatting requirements, including:
    • It is double-spaced.
    • The first line of each paragraph is indented.
    • Each page after the title page is numbered.
    • The exact word count appears after the document conclusion (but prior to the bibliography, if applicable).
    • Titles of books, films, web articles and journals are in italics, with no quotation marks.
  • The document is spell-checked with a British-English dictionary.
  • The assignment adheres to the set word limit (+/- 10%).

Research-Assignment Checklist

This list offers additional points specific to research assignments.

  • The assignment has a clear central argument or point which is stated in the introduction, developed in the body of the essay and summarised in the conclusion.
  • Your central argument responds directly to the research question.
  • You express your arguments clearly and concisely.
  • The assignment demonstrates engagement with relevant critical/scholarly literature.
  • In-text references appear consistently to acknowledge the use of all research sources, according to the referencing requirements.
  • The assignment has a thoroughly researched bibliography, presented according to the bibliography requirements.
  • Relevant musical remarks and/or examples incorporated, where relevant, to support the arguments being expressed.