English 421Y: Technical Writing Online

This week our group has been working to complete the rough draft of our white paper. First, we completed our new thumbnail design over this past weekend. After reviewing each member’s thumbnails from last week, we were able to combine the best attributes into a new design template. We also decided to use Adobe InDesign to create a master template that could be used for the entire paper.

As we’ve been working on the draft, several new questions and issues have also come up. Most importantly, we found that each person was using a slightly different format for their assigned section. To address the issue, we decided to break up each segment of the report using consistent subheaders. Now the information for each router is categorized under Hardware, Software, and Wireless Performance. We’ve also been trying to be consistent with our data, image sizes, and comparisons. For instance, only one member had originally included transfer rate data for their respective product. The other group members were then able to find similar data and include it in their own sections. By addressing these inconsistencies, we feel that the audience will be able to make a well-informed decision using our final paper.

Our group also addressed the issue of MLA citations in our paper. First, we wanted to make sure that everybody was using the same format for their citations. Then we realized that the MLA footnote citations may not be the best option for us, as our thumbnail design does not allow for a lot of extra text at the bottom of the page. Kristin proposed the use of shorter footnotes and listing the bulk of the citations at the end of the research paper. We agreed that this seemed like a more feasible option, and everybody agreed to use the same format for their individual citations.

In the upcoming week, we will be reviewing our draft and making corrections as necessary.