Research paper: problems and solutions

Here is a summary of problems I've encountered and solutions I've found as working on my research paper.

Photo by me.

PROBLEMS

• Wrong information. What I found in my research from the annotated bibliography assignment ended up being a lot of post-1700 information—e.g. designing type, use of type on the web, the type work of modern designers—which is what interested me! But it meant that I didn’t have a lot to go on when choosing what to write about. (We’ve already found that it would have been really helpful to know that we would be writing a research paper when we did the annotated bibliography assignment.)
• Limited information. My initial topic was insanely interesting to me—literacy as the beneficial effect of society influence on the development of typography. I had a couple of good examples (e.g. because the first type looked hand-written [Gutenberg], people were more open to printed materials), but not enough to go on, really.
• Limited time. The weekend after the assignment was given, it was my birthday, I had four (FOUR!) performances with BYU performing groups, and my parents were in town. My time was limited.

SOLUTIONS

• More research. I did more research online. It became more and more obvious that the Classical revival had a huge influence on the early development of Latin type. This became my new topic.
• Simplicity. What I found doing more research was so much simpler than my previous topic. This felt really good.
• Right information. I found that some of the research I had done for my annotated bibliography fit perfectly for this topic! I was also able to use information from Royal Skousen’s lecture.
• Previous knowledge. I had already studied part of my topic (Classicism) in another class. This made me more comfortable with my topic, and able to contribute my own knowledge to this new field.