It’s time to begin working on your biographies! Search Tips:
1. Use Google
2. Type your poet’s name in quotation marks For example, “Robert Frost”
3. Use additional sear terms outside of quotation marks such as poet and biography
4. You must use at least two sources for each biography, and Wikipedia is not considered a valid source. Sources with a “.org” or “.edu” extension are generally considered more academically sound.
5. To find cause of death, try using a phrase search with quotation marks such as “Robert Frost died from”, since Google will then search for sites that list that exact phrasing.
6. If you cannot find ANYTHING about a particular poet, try another poet from
your collection. You only need five poets’ biographies. If you have less than
five, you will need to find replacement poems from more prominent poets.
Your five biographies should be at least 2-3 paragraphs long (EACH) and include the following information:
Date and place of birth
Any schooling / childhood information
First major publication
Any major awards or honors
Any interesting/unusual facts
Date and reason of death (or current location)
In-text citations: When you copy a fact, idea, or a direct quote from a source, it must be cited. If you don't, that's considered plagiarism, and that is a bad, bad thing to do. In parentheses at the end of the idea or quote, put the first word from your "works cited page" entry for the source (if more than one entry starts with the same word, use that first word, then "..." and then the next word that is different).
The in-text citation should look like this fictitious example:
One aspect of Dukas Lubadago’s life that influenced him the most was his relationship with his neighbor, who was a famous scientist. “Young Dukas visited his neighbor often and was fascinated by the scientific process, and the endless possibilities of what the future of science held” (Smith 28).
Pay attention to where the quotation marks, parentheses, and punctuation are!
***FAILURE TO CITE YOUR SOURCES WILL RESULT IN A GRADE OF ZERO FOR YOUR BIOGRAPHY***
For further instructions on citations and works cited, see:
Bibliography guidelines PDF File (From the RCHS Library - the last page has in-text citations help!)
MLA FORMAT site (from the OWL online writing lab)
