Hi this is Tutor Nick P and this is lesson 249. The title of today's lesson is the difference between
biography, autobiography, and someone's memoirs. All right. It's
also good to note , remember memoirs, it comes directly from French. So it's
actually pronounced memoirs it's not pronounced (mem-oh-ears) or something
like that. In French, when you get an O I together
it has kind of what we call a (wah) sound. So that's why it ends up being
pronounced memoirs, in the same way that we pronounce resevoir that also ends in
an OIR. And we got it originally from French. Okay. Let's look at the difference
because sometimes students will ask , what's the difference between these three ? The first one,
a biography. This is probably the easiest one to distinguish. A biography is a book
that an author writes about someone else's life. Okay. So in this case when
you see the book and you see the author's name on the book , chances are he
is the real author. Now the other two autobiography and someone's memoirs
means somebody wrote it about their own life. Sometimes if it's a real celebrity.
Sometimes they hired a ghostwriter and they make the ghostwriter sign a
contract. That they never reveal this. So if someone has an autobiography
or someone's memoir there could be a fair chance that they hired a
ghostwriter to do it and then they just left their name on it. So at least with
the biography, it probably truly is the real author. With somebody's memoirs or
autobiography, it may or may not. I mean it is possible, they did write their own books,
but you do have to remember being an author is not easy. It's not easy to
write, especially like a lot of politicians or military people that or
generals that graduate they may not really have great writing skill.
Sometimes these politicians, they leave office and they're only out of office
for six months and bam, they have got a book together. And chances are if they never
wrote a book before, they probably hired a ghostwriter to help them with this
book. Because you know if they truly wrote it themselves it may have taken
them many years to actually do it especially if you didn't have real true
you know author writing experience. Okay. Let's
continue. All right. So this would be a typical example for autobiography.. That author wrote a biography about Marilyn Monroe's life.
Yeah. So remember this author, we write it about somebody else's life. Okay. Now
let's look at autobiography and someone's memoirs. Because they're the
two that are really much closer. An autobiography is a book that an author
writes about his or her own life and it usually starts from childhood and tells
of one's life often up to the time of writing or or close to it.
So they'll start very, very young. Maybe when they were born or in their childhood,
but with autobiography so tends to go really more through their whole life.
Autobiographies usually triy to be more factual about dates, events, etc. Yeah.
They try to make sure they they got it down perfectly, you know all the times,
the dates, and that's actually more important in autobiographies. Okay so
let's, let's take a look at this autobiography example. That tycoon's autobiography sold well. His
life was a rags-to-riches story. Remember if it's a rags to riches story , it means
somebody was born poor and then they probably through some business dealings or
adventures or whatever then they became very very rich. So this is actually more
likely to start in a childhood because he might want to show that how he was so poor,
and he came from nothing. And then he became a very rich powerful person. Okay.
Let's continue here. Memoirs are also a story that an
author has written about one's own life but they tend to be focused mostly on a
particular part of his or her life. It may not include one's childhood or
youth. Yeah especially if it was like a military guy, maybe people don't care
about his , you know, how he was brought up with his family and things like that. So
it may not focus on that. That's a little bit more likely to start maybe after he
joined the army already. So it might be more like that period. Let's continue.
Oh here's an example have. Many generals, if they choose to write their memoirs.
All right . Yeah so just like I said they probably only want to talk about the
time when they were more significant and more important. It could also possibly be
true for some politicians too they may write about the time period when they
got elected or when they had power and they're more focused on that. Uh just
like it says here, memoirs also tend to be more focused on one's feelings or
emotions. So they may not be as focused on the you know factual , about dates or
events or things like that a well. Okay. So hopefully you got a clear feeling
between these words. Even though I think in recent years somebody's memoirs
actually sounds a little cooler than the word autobiography and there is you know
maybe somebody will choose it just for that reason. And you don't always get the
word autobiography or somebody's metamoris actually in the title.
Sometimes you do , sometimes you don't. Okay anyway. I hope this explanation can
give you a better feeling of how all three are used and when it's more likely
that you quote one a biography an autobiography or someone's memoirs . Okay.
Thank you for your time. Bye-bye.