Academic and Business Writing. Optional: Pop-Up 1

photo edited by Laura Lai

by Laura Lai/Uncategorized 

It has happened before to hear people telling me: ‘Ah, but writing is easy!’ Writing is easy when someone needs to take a pen and write a note: ‘I’m in the shopping mall.’ This is easy to write. But when one needs to comply with the writing style’s demands, when one needs to employ literary devices and make out of writing art, writing becomes difficult. 

I wouldn’t have taken such a challenge if I thought writing is easy! When lots of consideration is given to the written word, writing is not easy. On this blog, I mainly write essays, comments, and reviews. Outside this blog, I mainly write plays and children’s books. At the course Academic and Business Writing, generously offered by Berkeley (University of California) free of charge, we’re asked to explain, narrate, describe, compare, discuss, etc. And so is the case with today’s optional writing.

What company or business is having the greatest impact in the world today, either positive or negative? Explain your response.

From my point of view, the coal mining industry has one of the greatest negative impacts in the world today. Coal is an underground fossil that is extracted and burned to generate energy. The extraction of coal affects land topography, may cause earthquakes (ex. Saar region, Germany), destroys soil and vegetation, destroys and displaces wildlife, and affects human health by causing lung and heart diseases. The burning of coal releases a considerable number of chemicals into the air causing air pollution (ex. Mpumalanga region in South Africa). Therefore, the coal mining industry is considered to be the largest contributor to the man-made increase of CO2 emissions in the atmosphere.

However, the quick closure of the approximately 110 million mines around the world would be a human disaster, too. Their closure does not affect only the millions of miners working in this industry, but a number that is at least three times more than the number of miners – considering that each is married and has one child. Having in sight their closure for the long run should provide governments with the necessary time to develop in those mining regions alternative industries for future former miners and their families to work.

How do you think email has affected communication? Do you hate it? Love it? Explain your response.

I think that electronic mail, or shortly, the ‘email’, had a positive impact on communication by making it more rapid, cheaper, and more environmentally friendly. The email operates across a network of computers allowing simultaneous mailing to many receivers (in ‘Cc’) and it allows sending a considerable pile of papers (such as a manuscript) free of charge (as ‘attachment’) – saving both paper and money. The regular post would first weigh the pile of paper and then the stamp’s value would be accordingly. Similarly to regular mail, the email allows also the ‘delivery notification’ – a free-of-charge service that confirms that the receiver read the email. I think of email as an efficient upgrade to regular mail, as well as a great alternative to it.

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