English 421Y: Technical Writing Online

This week our group worked to perfect our rough draft. Although the rough draft did an effective job portraying the research done on our three renewable energy resources, it needed editing and citations. In addition to making the corrections suggested by Professor Tirrell in his rough draft comments, the paper needed polishing.

Mike was in charge of the editing process. Dean, Adam P and Lindsay worked with him to collect citation information and give feedback on the direction of the paper. Adam W wrote the conclusion of the paper including a pros and cons table to sum up the comparisons between the three types of renewable energy we discuss.

Throughout the editing process we struggled with length. In order to include research done by every one of our group members, we even tried to add a section about wind power written by Mike. However, this would have made us over our word limit. We also noticed that another group focused their entire white paper on wind power. So although it was relevant to our paper on renewable energy, we came to a consensus that it needed to be cut.

We also discovered why our professors have us submit everything in this class in .PDF format. When Mike sent everyone the paper he edited, it looked completely different from what was on his computer. The changes from one version of Word to the next caused the format to be completely different on the other members’ computers. To correct this, he started sending .PDF files even though they don't allow anyone to edit them.

Our group communicated all week to ensure that editing was being done correctly and according to the overall goals of the group. We completed everything we needed to ahead of schedule. The work and feedback from everyone in our group has created a well researched, professional white paper.