Back before my mother got ill, I began working with a new client who was preparing a proposal for their client, a very large corportation. I had started working on the proposal outline, but had to stop work completely when Mom went into the hospital.
Last week I got back in touch with my client to see if they needed further assistance. Turns out that they did -- they asked if I could review, comment on, and make any necessary changes to what was now the fourth draft of the proposal. So I agreed to do that.
They e-mailed the file of the document, and when I read it, I was amazed to see that numerous paragraphs were repeated over and over in various sections of the text. You know how -- when you read something once, and then you read it again in a later section -- you get to thinking "didn't I read that before?" and then you look back in the text to see if it really was the same thing you read earlier? Well, that's what happened. Again and again, I was reading paragraphs that I was sure I had read before. And they were the same exact paragraphs to boot, not just paraphrases of those paragraphs. Just plain old cut and paste.
Now the thing is, if I can spot these repetitions, you can be sure that the proposal reviewers will spot them. And they won't be terribly impressed with your cut and paste ability versus your ability to write substantive content. If you have a very long proposal, it's OK to repeat a few sentences here and there, particularly if they focus on things that are of critical importance. But you don't want to have your reviewers thinking "didn't I read that same thing in a previous section?"
If you do use cut and paste in your proposal, you need to do it very judiciously. If you want to emphasize something you've already said, it's best to paraphrase what you wrote before, using different words and sentence structures. Either way, if you end up writing the same thing over and over, your reviewers will think that you don't have much to say.
So be careful out there. Don't repeat and repeat and repeat, thinking that no one will catch on. They will, I guarantee it.
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