English 421Y: Technical Writing Online

This week was a big week on our project. I designed a thumbnail for our group, which was frustrating for me, because I struggle with formatting in Microsoft Word. I hate that the lines never go where I want them to go, and usually just use InDesign, but I wanted to stay in Word since I knew it was probable that my group members wouldn't necessarily have this program at their disposal. In the end, we chose to use InDesign, and did incorporate a few elements of my thumbnail into our final version. The group liked the color I had chosen, and we decided to use a serif font like I had used in my body text. We may also end up using a version of the table that I had included.

During our group meeting on Wednesday, I looked up the MLA footnote style in the MLA handbook for the group. After the meeting, I created another thumbnail design in InDesign that incorporated my color, Joe's two-column layout and lines with Shane & Pat's serif font in the body. I made a .pdf of the file and sent it to the group for approval.

I also spent some time this week compiling the research I had done into Research Blogs. I ended up posting four because I just couldn't get all of the information in three. I think most of them are over the word count, too. If we have any issues in our paper, I think it will be trying to find what to leave out! My blogs cover the different specifications we'll be comparing, mostly, as well as including some statistical information we might use in the introduction to explain why salespersons should might want to read our white paper or care about wireless routers in general.

Finally, I wrote our group's activity report for the week and will post it after I have gotten approval from all of the group members. Over the weekend, I plan to begin compiling the draft information I've received and formatting it to fit into our thumbnail design.