Biography
Generic structure
- usually book length, although magazines publish short biographical pieces as feature articles
- generally structured in chronological sequence, starting with the parents, family and infancy of the personality who is the subject of the biography
- commonly includes lengthy quotations from the personality and his or her family, friends and colleagues
- incorporates resource material such as family photographs
- combines fact and opinion, presenting the writer's personal view of the personality
Cohesive ties
name of the personality (and sometimes of family members) used frequently, often as the subject of the sentence, often to start new paragraphs
- repeated use of third-person pronoun provides constant links with the proper noun (character's name)
- conjunctions-particularly of addition (e.g. 'and', 'but', 'while') and temporal (e.g. 'then', 'when', since') link sentences or paragraphs
Vocabulary
- many nouns describe qualities rather than objects
- heavy use of proper nouns (names of people and places)
- specialist words and names refer to the character's special area of achievement (in this case, Rugby League)
- uses extensive, carefully chosen vocabulary
Grammar
- generally narrated using third-person reported speech
- also substantial use of first-person direct speech (quotes)
- both reported and direct speech use a mix of past tense (when describing the personality's past life) and present tense (when describing what he says, does and thinks at the time of writing, or making generalizations about his character)
- complex sentences (made up of a number of clauses) are commonly used
- compound sentences (clauses of equal status joined by 'and', 'but' or 'not only but also') are frequent in the quotations
- very few really short sentences
- great majority of sentences are in statement form (not questions, commands or exclamations)
Paragraphing and punctuation
- inverted commas show direct speech
- mainly. full stops (periods) and commas
- some use of dashes, colons and semi -colons
- conventional paragraphs of medium
Layout
- format, published layout typical of novels and nonfiction books; that is, using one particular type face, with text extending across whole page (in a magazine article, text is often split into columns)
- photos are usually a feature, and usually on pages separate from the text