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MLA Sample-Communication in Business-Lecture Handout, Exercises of Effective Business Communication

This lecture handout is for Business Communication course. It was provided by Divya Mathur at Alagappa University. It includes: MLA, Research, Paper, Daly, Title, Centered, Thesis, Topic, Sentence, Signal, Phrase, Expert, Testimony

Typology: Exercises

2011/2012

Uploaded on 07/11/2012

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Download MLA Sample-Communication in Business-Lecture Handout and more Exercises Effective Business Communication in PDF only on Docsity! MLA Research Paper (Daly) Source: Diana Hacker (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2006). Angela Daly Professor Chavez English 101 14 March XXXX A Call to Action: Regulate Use of Cell Phones on the Road When a cell phone goes off in a classroom or at a concert, we are irritated, but at least our lives are not endangered. When we are on the road, however, irresponsible cell phone users are more than irritating: They are putting our lives at risk. Many of us have witnessed drivers so distracted by dialing and chatting that they resemble drunk drivers, weaving between lanes, for example, or nearly running down pedestrians in crosswalks. A number of bills to regulate use of cell phones on the road have been introduced in state legislatures, and the time has come to push for their passage. Regulation is needed because drivers using phones are seriously impaired and because laws on negligent and reckless driving are not sufficient to punish offenders. No one can deny that cell phones have caused traffic deaths and injuries. Cell phones were implicated in three fatal accidents in November 1999 alone. Early in November, two-year-old Morgan Pena was killed by a driver distracted by his cell phone. Morgan’s mother, Patti Pena, reports that the driver “ran a stop sign at 45 mph, broadsided my vehicle and killed Morgan as she sat in her car seat.” A week later, corrections officer Shannon Smith, who was guarding prisoners by the side of the road, was killed by a woman distracted by a phone call (Besthoff). On Thanksgiving weekend that same month, John and Carole Hall were killed when a Naval Daly 1 Title is centered. Opening sentences catch readers’ attention. Thesis asserts Angela Daly’s main point. Signal phrase names the author of the quotation to follow. No page number is available for this Web source. Daly uses a clear topic sentence. Author’s name is given in parenthe- ses; no page num- ber is available. Marginal annotations indicate MLA-style formatting and effective writing. Docsity.com Source: Diana Hacker (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2006). Academy midshipman crashed into their parked car. The driver said in court that when he looked up from the cell phone he was dial- ing, he was three feet from the car and had no time to stop (Stockwell B8). Expert testimony, public opinion, and even cartoons sug- gest that driving while phoning is dangerous. Frances Bents, an expert on the relation between cell phones and accidents, esti- mates that between 450 and 1,000 crashes a year have some connection to cell phone use (Layton C9). In a survey published by Farmers Insurance Group, 87% of those polled said that cell phones affect a driver’s ability, and 40% reported having close calls with drivers distracted by phones. Many cartoons have depicted the very real dangers of driving while distracted (see Fig. 1). Scientific research confirms the dangers of using phones while on the road. In 1997 an important study appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine. The authors, Donald Redelmeier and Robert Tibshirani, studied 699 volunteers who made their cell phone bills available in order to confirm the times when they had placed calls. The participants agreed to report any nonfatal collision in which they were involved. By comparing the time of a collision with the phone records, the researchers assessed the dangers of driving while phoning. The results are unsettling: We found that using a cellular telephone was associ- ated with a risk of having a motor vehicle collision that was about four times as high as that among the same drivers when they were not using their cellular telephones. This relative risk is similar Daly 2 Page number is given when available. Clear topic sentences, like this one, are used throughout the paper. Summary and long quotation are introduced with a signal phrase naming the authors. Long quotation is set off from the text; quotation marks are omitted. Docsity.com Source: Diana Hacker (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2006). thinking they are using their car phones responsibly because the definition of “negligent driving” is vague. As of December 2000, twenty countries were restricting use of cell phones in moving vehicles (Sundeen 8). In the United States, it is highly unlikely that legislation could be passed on the national level, since traffic safety is considered a state and local issue. To date, only a few counties and towns have passed traffic laws restricting cell phone use. For example, in Suffolk County, New York, it is illegal for drivers to use a handheld phone for anything but an emergency call while on the road (Haughney A8). The first town to restrict use of handheld phones was Brook- lyn, Ohio (Layton C9). Brooklyn, the first community in the country to pass a seat belt law, has once again shown its concern for traffic safety. Laws passed by counties and towns have had some effect, but it makes more sense to legislate at the state level. Local laws are not likely to have the impact of state laws, and keeping track of a wide variety of local ordinances is confusing for drivers. Even a spokesperson for Verizon Wireless has said that statewide bans are preferable to a “crazy patchwork quilt of ordinances” (qtd. in Haughney A8). Unfortunately, although a number of bills have been introduced in state legislatures, as of early 2001 no state law seriously restricting use of the phones had passed--largely because of effective lobbying from the wireless industry. Despite the claims of some lobbyists, tough laws regulating phone use can make our roads safer. In Japan, for example, acci- dents linked to cell phones fell by 75% just a month after the country prohibited using a handheld phone while driving (Haugh- Daly 5 Daly explains why US laws need to be passed on the state level. Transition helps readers move from one paragraph to the next. Daly cites an indi- rect source: words quoted in another source. Daly counters a claim made by some opponents. Docsity.com Source: Diana Hacker (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2006). ney A8). Research suggests and common sense tells us that it is not possible to drive an automobile at high speeds, dial numbers, and carry on conversations without significant risks. When such behavior is regulated, obviously our roads will be safer. Because of mounting public awareness of the dangers of driv- ers distracted by phones, state legislators must begin to take the problem seriously. “It’s definitely an issue that is gaining steam around the country,” says Matt Sundeen of the National Conference of State Legislatures (qtd. in Layton C9). Lon Anderson of the American Automobile Association agrees: “There is momentum building,” he says, to pass laws (qtd. in Layton C9). The time has come for states to adopt legislation restricting the use of cell phones in moving vehicles. Daly 6 For variety Daly places a signal phrase after a brief quotation. The paper ends with Daly’s stand on the issue. Docsity.com Source: Diana Hacker (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2006). Works Cited Besthoff, Len. “Cell Phone Use Increases Risk of Accidents, but Users Willing to Take the Risk.” WRAL Online. 11 Nov. 1999. 12 Jan. 2001 <http://www.wral-tv.com/news/wral/1999/ 1110-talking-driving>. Farmers Insurance Group. “New Survey Shows Drivers Have Had ‘Close Calls’ with Cell Phone Users.” Farmers Insurance Group. 8 May 2000. 12 Jan. 2001 <http:// www.farmersinsurance.com/news_cellphones.html>. Haughney, Christine. “Taking Phones out of Drivers’ Hands.” Wash- ington Post 5 Nov. 2000: A8. Ippolito, Milo. “Driver’s Sentence Not Justice, Mom Says.” Atlanta Journal-Constitution 25 Sept. 1999: J1. Layton, Lyndsey. “Legislators Aiming to Disconnect Motorists.” Washington Post 10 Dec. 2000: C1+. Lowe, Chan. Cartoon. Washington Post 22 July 2000: A21. Pena, Patricia N. “Patti Pena’s Letter to Car Talk.” Cars.com. Car Talk. 10 Jan. 2001 <http://cartalk.cars.com/About/ Morgan-Pena/letter.html>. Redelmeier, Donald A., and Robert J. Tibshirani. “Association be- tween Cellular-Telephone Calls and Motor Vehicle Collisions.” New England Journal of Medicine 336 (1997): 453-58. Stockwell, Jamie. “Phone Use Faulted in Collision.” Washington Post 6 Dec. 2000: B1+. Sundeen, Matt. “Cell Phones and Highway Safety: 2000 State Leg- islative Update.” National Conference of State Legislatures. Dec. 2000. 9 pp. 27 Feb. 2001 <http://ncsl.org/programs/ esnr/cellphone.pdf>. Daly 7 Heading is centered. List is alphabet- ized by authors’ last names (or by title when a work has no author). First line of each entry is at the left margin; extra lines are indented 1⁄2'' (or five spaces). Double-spacing is used throughout. The URL is broken after a slash. No hyphen is inserted. Docsity.com