What Will You Do?

Sometimes, I can spot new proposal writers simply by the way they write. Other times, I can spot people who aren't really good writers, but have been assigned to write a section of a proposal because they have the right kind of technical expertise or just because they are there. How can I do this? It's easy. Those who haven't had much experience in proposal writing or those who are just poor writers tend to do two things:

• Mix tenses -- most often present and future tenses.
• Use the passive voice rather than the active voice.

I'm not interested in giving a grammar lesson. In fact, I barely remember any real grammatical rules that I may have learned in my elementary school days. But tenses and voices can be pretty important when it comes to writing a proposal for a grant or contract.

We often use the word "proposal" without thinking about what it really means. In essence, we write proposals to tell funders what we are going to do if -- in the future -- they will be kind enough to award us the contract or grant that we are applying for. So, when we are describing our project and the activities we propose to undertake, we want to use the future tense: "We will implement the following activities," not "We are implementing the following activities" (present tense), unless those activities are something that you are actually doing now. A lot of people tend to mix present and future tenses in the same paragraph, or even in the same sentence. But you can avoid this if you remember that your proposal describes the things you are going to do after you get your money.

Use of the active voice is also important in proposal writing. The active voice is more forceful than the passive voice. It gives the reader the impression that someone is actually going to do something or that some event is going to occur -- "The Project Director will prepare the final report" -- as opposed to something that will somehow just passively take place -- "The final report will be written by the Project Director." While these may not be the best examples, you can look up the terms "active and passive voice" to get a better idea of what I mean. In my view, the active voice should be used as much as possible when writing a proposal.

And that's my proposal writing tip for today.