Superstorm Sandy had a severe impact to the East Coast at
the end of October. It has become the second largest storm in recordkeeping.
All the residents are urgent to prepare and face the difficulties they will
meet, including power cuts,
water cuts,
food shortages
and housing damages.
Once the house is out of power and the tap water cut, the refrigerator won’t
work and residents won’t have the running water to drink and use. When the
severe storm affects all the former
problems, making
sure your food is safe and clean is vital due to the fact that unsafe food
will cause diarrhea, even
death.
In this fatal moment, A Consumer’s Guide To Food Safety: Severe
Storms And Hurricanes will be very helpful for the residents who live in the disaster area.
This document is published on the website of the United States Department of Agriculture. To be more
specific, it is written by the U.S.
Department of Agriculture Food Safety and Inspection Service. Generally speaking, the document
provides
various ways
to determine if the food is safe and how to keep food safe. The
audience will be social workers and general residents. From social workers’
perspective, they want to provide this guide to the public, to remind them be
aware of the food safety in severe weather.
General residents would like to read and print it out in case of they
need it someday. In an overview of the guide, the intention of the guide is
good for the audience, but it is not in a user-friendly format. However, will people remember most tips from the guide when they
need to?
In this article, I will argue how the simple tips seem to omit information within guides.
As a government
document, especially a guide to the public, this guide should be easily accessed by the public. The
Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease is 57.4; Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level is 9.6; Average
Grade Level is 10.1; 17.3 words per sentence. According to the statistics, this
guide seems easy to understand. Most parts of this article are accessible and clear.
It is likely to be perceived as “credible” to the public, because it is published by a government
department.
The content from this guide is definitely unbiased
because there isn’t a specific position for the authors. The document doesn’t seem “dumbed down” or
potentially insulting, but it seems dry. Some parts sound like doing an
experiment in labs. Moreover, almost
all the sentences start with a verb, and they read like commands.
The tone is neutral at
most times, except “Knowing how to determine if food is safe and how to keep
food safe will help minimize the potential loss of food and reduce the risk of
foodborne illness.” It sounds a little serious, and evokes the public to pay
attention to their food safety during an emergency. However, the serious tone
contrasts with the simplistic information. Readers may feel that the guide has
a vital core but with an unimportant appearance. Then they will question
whether the information is really important to them or not.
At the beginning of the
guide, it shows that “This Consumer’s Guide will help you make the right
decisions for keeping your family safe during an emergency.” This sentence uses metabasis and states
the major theory of the piece. Coming straight to the main point helps the
audience know what they are exactly going to read. It is an effective communication within
vast public safety
guides.
Another effective
rhetorical device in this guide is using parallelism “STEPS TO FOLLOW TO
PREPARE FOR A POSSIBLE WEATHER EMERGENCY: Make sure the freezer... Freeze containers... Freeze
refrigerated items... Plan ahead ...Store food... Have coolers...Group food...”
All the steps start with a verb and use the second person point of view. In
front of each step, the writer uses a bullet to separate each sentence, which
helps the reader read this part easily.
However, it is
oversimplifying
the subject matter in some parts. “Group food together in the freezer—this
helps the food stay cold longer.” How does one group food? How does one classify the food and according to what? Maybe some
people would think everyone should have the common sense of how to divide food
in different categories, but the tone of the whole guide will be distinct. For
instance, in the last step of “Steps to follow during and after the weather
emergency”, “Discard refrigerated perishable food such as meat, poultry, fish,
soft cheeses, milk, eggs, leftovers, and deli items after 4 hours without
power.” In this example, the author gives what kinds of food are perishable. In
this case, the author is oversimplifying some information, but he also provides
more details.
Furthermore, providing
specific information is helpful for the audience. Nevertheless, how many readers will
remember the exact information? Here is the example of how to disinfect the
water in using household bleach, “Add 1/8 teaspoon (or 8 drops) of regular,
unscented, liquid household bleach for each gallon of water, stir it well and
let it stand for 30 minutes before you use it. Store disinfected water in clean
containers with covers.” This step sounds like doing a science experiment. When
the hurricane comes and the power is off, people cannot use their computer to check this
pdf unless they print it beforehand.
How many readers will remember what the dosage of bleach is? And how long does
the water need to stand? Moreover,
even though they remember all the
steps, they might not have the tools to measure the bleach. These details don’t bring
about the author’s purpose. If the author can explain this step in a vivid and easy way,
the audience will remember it so they can measure the bleach without difficulties.
To sum up, the whole guide
is useful for the public, even
though some parts are oversimplifying while other parts are complicating. Thus,
the tone between different sections is distinct. If the readers print it out
and they don’t need to remember all the tips, they will feel easy to use this
guide. Nevertheless, if the audience doesn’t keep a copy when they need to use,
they will feel struggle with recalling those unfriendly user format guidelines.
--Xiaoqi Wu
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