Proposal Writing Articles

Proposal Writing: Academic Ghosts Get in the Way of Effective Proposals

Proposal Writing can suffer if we believe everything our English teachers taught us.

Perhaps what they taught us and what we remembered were completely different. And that difference hampers us when we try to create effective proposals.

Let me explain.

To do that, please join me in a mental time capsule that takes us back in time - back to the fifth and sixth grades.

Back in the fifth and sixth grades, you probably went through the school system similar to the way I did. You spent all day with the same person; it wasn't your mother or father. You spent a big part of your day with your elementary school teacher.

I admire elementary school teachers. They are my heroes. They face a lot of challenges. They have to teach you science, math, social studies, English, and geography. They sometimes concerned themselves with eraser clapping, milk money, and PTA meetings.

One of these responsibilities was to teach you English. When they put on their English teachers' hats, their primary responsibility was to teach you the concept of a sentence.

Back then, in 5th and 6th grade, we were young. We were impressionable. And, coming from authority figures we heard words like:

Declarative
Interrogative
Exclamatory
Imperative

Terrifying sounding words, right?

That experience with those four terrifying words left an everlasting impression on us.

Big People like Big Words.

What other conclusion could we come to?

Our knowledge base was very limited. We didn't know any better. We were young and very impressionable.

After learning the kinds of sentences, we learned the types of sentences.

And we learned:

"This is a simple sentence."

"This is a compound sentence; it contains two independent clauses."

"This is a complex sentence which contains one dependent and one independent clause."

"This is a compound-complex sentence and because it contains two independent clauses and a dependent clause, it becomes a long sentence."

In our young, impressionable minds, what then became the standard by which we thought we were going to be judged?

Long sentences!

First, we learned that big people like big words. Now, we learn that big people like big sentences.

Those elementary school teachers took a very logical approach.

They started very simply and ended with more difficult material. This approach showed us the various ways we speak and the various types of sentences we could use in writing. Unfortunately, in our young, impressionable minds, we retained only the message:

Big People Like Big Words; Big People Like Big Sentences.

Then, you entered the seventh grade. Maybe by this time, you met a specialist - a dedicated English teacher. That dedicated English teacher assumed that the fifth and sixth grade teachers taught you all these neat things about sentences. Now you have to put these sentences together into something called a "paragraph."

Think about your first encounter with paragraph writing.

I know the only two things you ever really remember about paragraph writing. I know those two things because I ask participants in my workshops, "What do you remember about writing that first paragraph?" I get eight to ten different answers.

Number one and number two are always the same.

Think back to that first paragraph you had to write. Tell me what you remember about that first paragraph. (Remember, I asked you to play make believe.)

Go ahead, say it out loud. Or, if you're reading this in your office or on a plane, and you don't want people to throw a net over your head, say it to yourself. Tell me the first thing you remember about writing that first paragraph.

Agony! Okay, what else? Say it. I know it's on the tip of your tongue.

Yes, that's right.

Indent.

That's number one on the hit parade - Indent.

Of all of the things that people could remember about writing, what sticks in their brains?

Indent!

Now, much of what we read come to us left justified, which means many people have dropped the concept of indenting.

The second thing people tell me they remember about writing their first paragraph is that that first paragraph had to be 100 words. Either 100 words or a certain number of sentences.

Remember how we used to write? We looked at that blank sheet and uttered the writer's prayer,

"Please God, let words appear"

We wrote that first sentence and then we counted the words.

"12 - yes! We're on our way."

Then we looked for the second sentence and wrote that down. Then what did we do? We counted the words. We associated writing with a number.

Then, we entered the 10th grade, 11th grade, or 12th grade.

What kind of writing are we doing now?

Remember those dreaded assignments - term papers, themes, compositions, book reports?

We are no longer talking 100 words. Now we're talking ten pages!

Remember how suddenly the margins got bigger? We learned how to play the game.

Remember how our penmanship improved? We used to write small. Ten pages, wow! All of a sudden, our writing became larger. That's how we got to 10 pages.

Also, back then, when we had to write that 10 page term paper, we introduced ourselves to two items - a dictionary and a thesaurus.

Back then, we started doing bizarre things - like utilizing "utilize" rather than using "use." We wrote the paper and it was only eight pages long.

That will never do. So we reread the paper and found this little word "use."

That word was too small. So, we looked in the dictionary and found the word "utilize" - the stuff dreams are made of.

Early in our education, we learned some valuable lessons.

First, big words fill pages. What was our objective? We had to fill pages.

Second, we learned a system for good grades. The more big words we used, the better our grade. The better the grades, the more big words we used. Writing became a game. We knew how to play the game. That stuck with us.

In the fifth and sixth grade, we heard words like "declarative" and "interrogative." When we wrote our term papers, we used words like "utilize" and "endeavor."

Then some of us entered college.

Do you remember the horror of filling two blue books during the final exam?

Did those blue books tell what you knew about the subject?

No!

Did they tell how you could apply that information in real life?

No!

All that experience showed was how well we could shovel academic babble.

Throughout your formal education, you had a number associated with writing, 100 words, 10 pages, two blue books.

Now you get into a business environment to find out that none of that stuff works. It's a completely different focus.

Because we focused on getting to 100 words, 10 pages and two blue books, the length of our sentences increased, our words got bigger, and we used more prepositional phrases.

Because we wrote like that in school, we naturally transferred that approach to business writing.

In business, our audience does not have time to read two-pages when one-page will do. Our audience is not impressed by the length of our sentences or the extent of our vocabulary.

In the past, because we focused on getting to 100 words, 10 pages and two blue books, we increased the length of our sentences, searched for bigger words, and used more prepositional phrases.

To get better results with our proposals, we need to reverse that process. We need to become clear, concise, correct, complete, and conversational.

Will that be easy?

No.

THREE WAYS TO IMPROVE YOUR PROPOSALS

1. Learn to use your grammar checker correctly. Doing so can save you a lot of time and save you a lot of embarrassment

2. Before you send your proposals to your clients, ask co-workers or even friends who do not work for your company or in your industry to read what you have written. If they don't understand it the way you do, they might be giving you an indication of how your clients would react.

3. Use what I call a "Twenty-four Hour Drawer." After you have completed your document, set it aside for at least one day. Two Days would be better. You will be amazed at some of the errors you will find. That's because you will be re-reading the work, not remembering it.
 

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