Angelique Morris
English 1010
Justin Suiter
October 7, 2010
Public Document Rhetorical Analysis Rough Draft
The title of my public document is titled “Warm laptop can be harmful.” The purpose of this newspaper article was to inform and warn readers about how warm laptops can be harmful. The author, Lindsey Tanner, shares with us some harmful incidents that deal with resting laptops on our laps. In one recent case, a 12 year-old boy developed a sponge-patterned skin discoloration on his left thigh after playing computer games a few hours everyday for several months. Another incident, involved a Virginia law student who sought treatment for mottled discoloration on her leg. Dr. Kimberly Salkey, who treated the young woman, was stumped until she learned the student spent about six hours a day working with her computer propped on her lap. The Temperature underneath registered 125 degrees. That case, from 2007, is one of the 10 laptop-related cases reported in medical journals in the past six years.
Those are just two from the article. I would believe the writer was trying to reach an audience that uses laptops regularly and that this article was intended to inform and forewarn users of the dangers of having a hot laptop on your lap for extended period of time. She did use a bit of sarcasm in the beginning when she said “Have you ever worked with your laptop computer sitting on your lap, heating up your legs? If so, you might want to rethink that habit.” I view this as a eye grabber to pull in readers to read the rest. I also feel as if the writer was almost trying to scare, in a mild way, readers into not sitting hot laptops on readers’ laps. Clearly the writer had to do some research on this article to arrange her facts, points, and reasons to back up her thesis. On an emotional level, personally, the way I reacted to the article was that I took this in to consideration because I use a laptop on my lap everyday. The arrangement of the article...