Getting started on your proposal – are you ready to put pen to paper?

Much of what I have to say about bid-writing best practice is focused on clarity. If a proposal is unclear then it’s very difficult – sometimes impossible – to understand it. And if it can’t be understood then it can’t be evaluated. Spoiler alert: this is unlikely to result in a positive outcome. This month’s post looks at an elementary but alarmingly-common flaw in many people’s approach to proposal development that almost always severely compromises clarity.

Putting pen to paper – but are you ready to start writing?
For anyone who intends to submit a research proposal, the blank application form can loom large. The sooner you stop decorating your ‘to-do’ list and get something written down, the less intimidating that form will seem. So it’s surely best to start writing sooner rather than later? Well, up to a point. But the key question here is not “how soon should I start writing?” but rather “when am I ready to start writing?” Fortunately this isn’t a very difficult question to answer.


Consider the task of producing a marketing brochure for a newly-launched car. It must set out the details, present all the hard facts and specifications, and capture the spirit of the car’s form, elegance and panache. Much like a research proposal, the brochure’s purpose is to inform and to sell. Now consider the job of designing that car. This is clearly a very different task, and one that’s completely separate from writing about the car (and probably a good bit more complex too). Finally, imagine trying to write the brochure before the car has been designed…



It doesn’t take any great leap of imagination to swap ‘nascent research project’ for ‘newly-launched car’ in the paragraph above. And as in the motor industry, surely no sane person would attempt to write a marketing document (i.e. a proposal) for a research project they hadn’t yet designed and planned. Would they?

Don’t try to describe something that doesn’t exist yet!
There’s an anecdote about an exchange between the late Richard Feynman, renowned not just as a great theoretical physicist but also as a first-rate teacher of physics, and his colleague David Goodstein, professor of physics at CalTech. Goodstein asked Feynman to explain, in an easy-to-understand way, why spin one-half particles obey Fermi-Dirac statistics (nope, me neither). After a pause for consideration, Feynman promised he’d prepare a freshman lecture on it, his way of breaking down a complex subject and re-presenting it in relatively clear and simple terms. But after a few days he confessed that he couldn't do it, that he’d been unable to reduce the subject to freshman level. In his own words, “that means we don't really understand it”. So even Richard Feynman couldn’t clearly describe something he didn’t yet fully understand. And just like Feynman, if you don’t yet know and understand all the details of your proposed research project, then you can’t possibly describe and explain the project clearly to someone else – someone like, say, an evaluator.


I think that as with launching a new car, it’s designing, planning and pulling together all the exhaustive details of a research project that’s the harder job. Once that’s all done – and I mean really done, with pretty much every last detail thrashed out – then it’s actually not so difficult to write about it. You’ll be writing about something tangible that really exists (at least on paper), something that you can properly visualise and understand. The alternative is to try to combine the two tasks and attempt to design the project as you write about it (or write about it as you design it – whatever). This is a bit like trying to photograph a moving object – it’s difficult to get a clear picture. And yet it’s a surprisingly common approach, often because insufficient time has been set aside for completing the two key strands of the bid-development process consecutively. I guess the mind-set is something like: “I don’t yet know exactly what I’m going to do or how I’m going to do it, but I’m sure it’ll all become clear once I start writing…” I sympathise with this approach, but I don't condone it. In fact, I contend that it's a major contributory factor to many unsuccessful bids. 

Getting the details sorted first
At the most basic level, you’ll need to finalise exactly what you’re setting out to discover; decide on the methodology you’ll use to discover it; determine who needs to be involved to carry out the project activities; and work out everything you’ll need by way of resources. Putting more flesh on these bones, you’ll need to plan the timescale for carrying out each separate activity and sub-activity; consider how the activities will be managed and co-ordinated; and work out the costs associated with all project activities. There will be other specific details to address too, like how data and IP will be managed and what you’ll do to maximise impact. Of course, there’s a bit of wiggle room for some of these details to change a bit as the bid develops. A would-be collaborator might pull out unexpectedly, for example, or a new paper might be published whose findings you just can’t ignore. But the important thing is always to have a concrete and comprehensive plan in place – and if necessary a solid plan B – that you can describe in your proposal.

So – are you ready to write?

Clearly then, the answer to the question “am I ready to start writing?” should be pretty straightforward. Do you have a fully-planned-out research project to write about? If you were to sit down with an evaluator, could you describe that project to them succinctly and convincingly, answering all their questions satisfactorily without drawing attention to any ‘tbc’ gaps in the details?

If it’s ‘yes’, ‘yes’ and ‘yes’ to the above, then you’re probably good to go – and your chances of success should be that much higher as a result. But if the answer to any of these questions is 'no' then I'll leave you with the words of another great physicist, none other than Albert Einstein: 

"If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough."

The views and opinions expressed in this blog are mine alone and are in no way endorsed by my employer. Factual information and guidance are provided on a 'best-endeavour' basis and may become out of date over time. No responsibility can be taken for any action or inaction taken or not in respect of the content of this blog. 

Writing great lay summaries (that lay readers can actually understand)

A lay summary – sometimes referred to as a plain-English or plain-language summary – is pitched at a general, non-academic audience. Its primary purpose is to tell members of the public, who pay for your research through their taxes or charitable donations, what they’re getting for their money and why it matters. 

Lay summary readership
The reader will often not have a scientific or research background and typically won’t have any specialist knowledge of your particular subject area. They will be looking for a brief overview of the context of your research, what it involves, its aims and objectives, and its potential real-world benefits. However, do be aware that your lay readers will come from diverse backgrounds. Some may be clinicians, for example, while others could be trustees of the charity that’s funding your research or patients who could benefit from it. And there’s a twist. Some of your readers – including a few who really matter – may actually be experts. A lay summary can be a useful quick-start entry point for an evaluator when they first pick up your proposal. So it’s important not to over-simplify to the point where the reader may feel patronised.

Using plain language
Fortunately, writing good plain language and not patronising the reader are fully compatible. As the Psychological Bulletin advises paper authors in their guidelines for submission, the first step towards clarity is writing simply. The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) takes a very clear stance on the matter: 

“Plain language is grammatically correct language that includes complete sentence structure and accurate word usage. Plain language is not unprofessional writing or a method of ‘dumbing down’ or ‘talking down’ to the reader.”

There’s lots of information on the web about the principles of writing in plain language, but if you stick to the following basics then you won’t go far wrong:

• Structure the content logically. You’re telling a ‘story’ about a problem, your plans for tackling that problem, and the impact you hope to have on it.
• Focus on your key messages and avoid getting bogged down in the detail.
• Cut out all jargon. Jargon excludes the uninitiated, but you want to include. So make sure all your terminology is accessible.
• The same goes for obscure and made-up abbreviations and acronyms. ‘NHS’ is fine, ‘BBD’ (blood-borne disease) much less so. 
• Technical terms aren’t necessarily jargon, but they can be difficult for non-specialists to understand. If there’s no realistic alternative to using them, include a short explainer.
• Avoid overly-formal language. Don’t say ‘utilise’ when ‘use’ would do.
• Use short paragraphs (one thought per paragraph), short sentences (say 10-15 words on average), and consider using subheadings and bullet points where appropriate.
• Try to break things up on the page with some nice white space.
• Avoid language that de-personalises – ‘patients’ or just ‘people’ is generally preferable to ‘service users’ in the context of health-services and medical research.
• Cut down on use of the passive voice. ‘We will interview at least 20 participants’ works better than ‘At least 20 participants will be interviewed’ in this context – write as if you’re talking to someone.
• Go easy on adjectives and hype – let the reader decide whether your idea is ‘truly ground-breaking’.

Check the funder’s specific guidance, and be sure to cover all the points they want covered in the lay summary. Importantly, a lay summary should never be the same as a scientific summary or similar. If the funder has asked you for both then they want two different things – so if you’re thinking of copying and pasting anything then please think again!


Resources
The INVOLVE national advisory group, funded by the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR), runs the ‘Make it Clear’ campaign and provides excellent advice and resources for writing a good lay summary on their website.


The views and opinions expressed in this blog are mine alone and are in no way endorsed by my employer. Factual information and guidance are provided on a 'best-endeavour' basis and may become out of date over time. No responsibility can be taken for any action or inaction taken or not in respect of the content of this blog.   

WAMAAANG! (Why All Made-up Acronyms and Abbreviations Are Not Good)

This is quite a short post. But I could have made it even shorter by coining some new acronyms and abbreviations. By shrinking several words down into one (sort-of) word, I could have saved space and time while slowing the rate at which overuse is wearing the letters off my keyboard and – better yet – reducing my risk of repetitive-strain injury. Surely nothing there not to like?

Abbreviation or acronym?

First off, a very quick primer for the uninitiated and those who have never been sufficiently interested to ask Google. The terms ‘abbreviation’ and ‘acronym’ are quite often used interchangeably, but they actually have different (albeit related) meanings. Abbreviations in this context are contractions of multiple-word names, phrases or other terms, comprised of each word’s first letter. So MND is a commonly-used abbreviation of motor neurone disease. Acronyms are a special class of such abbreviations that can be – and normally are – spoken as words. Chat to someone about Donald Trump’s antipathy towards “en ay tee oh”, for example, and they’ll probably just stare at you blankly. But mention your worries about Trump’s lack of commitment to his NATO allies and they’ll at least understand what you’re on about, even if they’re at odds with your political stance.

Good writing style – conventions when abbreviating

First, consider only using an abbreviated form at all if you’re going to repeat the term three times or more. The accepted convention when using an abbreviation or acronym is to introduce it on first use by writing it out in full, followed by its abbreviated form in brackets. Thereafter, just use the abbreviated form. Decide whether the term and its abbreviation need to be introduced just once at the start of the document, or perhaps at the start of each new section.

The above holds true unless the name or term in question is better known and more frequently referred to in its abbreviated form – for example the BBC or the NHS. For abbreviations like these, just use them as they are from the outset.

To abbreviate or not?

If the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation can turn itself into a nice punchy acronym, why shouldn’t we get in on the action and come up with a few abbreviations of our own? After all, it gets so boring typing the same thing over again, and shortening it would make valuable savings to word-count and document length.

However, research proposals are generally not an easy read. Even for a subject expert, it’s likely that your proposal will introduce some new ideas or approaches that may take a bit of effort to get to grips with. For readers whose expertise lies in another area, the path to understanding will be even more of an uphill journey. And for the lay reader (who may also be involved in evaluating your proposal), it can be very heavy going. But it’s impossible for anyone to evaluate a proposal if they don’t understand it, so you must do everything in your power to make it as clear and easy to read as possible. It’s vital not to commit any crimes against readability that will annoy the reviewer, who may already be tired and a bit fed up with reading proposals.

So in a proposal whose main focus is motor neurone disease, for example, it’s probably not asking too much of the reader to switch to the abbreviated ‘MND’ once it has been introduced. They’re reasonably unlikely to forget what it means, even if they weren't previously familiar with it. But in a proposal on, say, eating-disorder behaviours which includes multiple references to ‘restrictions against whole categories of food’ and ‘new practices with food or fad diets’, I would strongly advise against minting a couple of new abbreviations – RAWCF (almost an acronym!) and NPFFD – just to save yourself a few words. Your reader, who may already be struggling with a complex topic, is highly unlikely to remember what each means and won’t thank you for having to scroll back up though your document repeatedly to remind themselves. Each time they’re forced to do this they’ll become a bit more distracted and a bit less patient. This won’t increase your chances of a favourable review.

There’s at least one other person out there who agrees with me on this. In 2010 Elon Musk, well known for his forthright all-company emails (among other things), wrote the following in an email titled ‘Acronyms Seriously Suck’ (see what he did there?):

“There is a creeping tendency to use made up acronyms at SpaceX. Excessive use of made up acronyms is a significant impediment to communication and keeping communication good as we grow is incredibly important.”

Succinctly put. Maybe my blog post only really needed to be a couple of lines long?

A few final thoughts

My aim here is not to put you off using shortened forms, just to plead for sanity in their use. But while I’m here, there are a couple of other things I need to get off my chest…

Some abbreviated terms are proper nouns – for example names of organisations. So of course use capitals when writing them out in full. But just because the abbreviated form is made up of capital letters, there’s no automatic requirement to use title case when writing out the long form. Motor neurone disease really doesn’t need caps, for example.

Steer clear of full stops after each letter. It’s something of an archaic practice and no one really does it any more. If you’re pluralising an abbreviation, use a lower case ‘s’ – and for the love of all that’s holy please don’t precede it with an apostrophe!

When deciding whether to use ‘a’ or ‘an’ before an abbreviation, go with your internal voice (or try reading it aloud). ‘Future Leaders Fellowship’ takes an ‘a’, but ‘an FLF’ is so much more comfortable than 'a FLF' when you read it either out loud or in your head.

Finally, don’t bother introducing an abbreviation or acronym at all if you’re not going to use it again – that just wastes space and the reader's time.

So if I’ve converted you to my cause and you want to find out more about best practice when using acronyms and abbreviations, then this blog post about the well-regarded the American Psychological Association style guide is a good starting point.

The views and opinions expressed in this blog are mine alone and are in no way endorsed by my employer. Factual information and guidance are provided on a 'best-endeavour' basis and may become out of date over time. No responsibility can be taken for any action or inaction taken or not in respect of the content of this blog. 

Text that says ‘come on in and keep reading’ – the case for nothingness

Reading stuff can be a chore. When you landed on this page, chances are the first thing you did was skim it quickly – perhaps subconsciously – to assess whether the benefits of staying and reading might be worth 10 non-refundable minutes of your life. Most of us have opened a lengthy text-dense email only to recoil in horror and close it again hurriedly, never to return.

For the writer this can be a big problem. You have so much to tell your would-be reader, but by putting it onto a page you risk frightening them off. So what to do?

Readers fall into two broad categories – those who want to read what you’ve written and those who have to read it (perhaps because it’s their job). Your challenge is to convert the latter into the former. Strategies for tempting your reader in – or at least not frightening them off – and keeping them reading go well beyond the content itself. This blog post will look at one essential strategy: using white space to make your pages more inviting.

The inviting page

Cast your eye over this page and take in its structure and elements. It has a title and subheadings, multiple short paragraphs, a bulleted list and a couple of images. And between all of these, something of almost immeasurable value – white space. Picture your reader as an explorer, surveying the vista ahead of them. Can they see a clear pathway, a navigable route to their destination that avoids impenetrable jungle and doesn’t look too exhausting? White space will do this for your page. A liberal sprinkling of nothingness.

White space is easy, right?

Including white space on your page requires no special technical skills or arcane knowledge. It’s not physically demanding and it takes no extra time. It’s not a limited resource, and there’s no financial cost to using it. Why then do so many grant-funding proposals include almost none of it?

OK, so I’m being disingenuous. I know why not – page limit. Almost every funder restricts the length of proposals, either by way of a word-count (or character-count) limit or a page limit. And if you’re limited by number of pages then the first thing that goes in the bin is white space. Margins as small as permitted, line spacing as narrow as it will go, super-long sentences instead of bullet points, no space between paragraphs. As for subheadings…

Surely funders need all this detail?

Your research is really important to you. It’s a very big part of your life. You think about it a great deal, you spend a lot of time planning and doing it, and you’re confident that it will make a real difference. It really interests you – if it didn’t then you wouldn’t do it.

Unfortunately, almost none of the above applies to the evaluator. They have many things in their lives that are more important to them than your proposal. They have very limited time to read and understand it. And they’ll approach it with a jaundiced scepticism borne of reading dozens of proposals promising to change the world. Funders know this, and they know they’ll never recruit any evaluators if they make the job too onerous. So they try to keep it as quick and easy as possible.

With this in mind, here’s a multiple-choice question. Funders and their evaluators would prefer you to:

A: Shoehorn half as much detail again into the maximum page limit – a time-consuming double whammy of more stuff to read in a format that takes ages to plough through

B: Provide enough information to fit comfortably within the maximum page limit, presented on pages that won’t make anyone’s eyes bleed

Ummm... Put simply, if the funder wanted 15 pages worth of information then they’d specify a 15-page proposal. Rather than, say, eight.

   

This may sound fine as a general rule, at least in theory. But sometimes you just need to provide all that detail so the evaluator can really understand your proposal. There’s just so much to tell and it’s all so important – surely they’ll appreciate the extra information?

Well, my nine year old often ‘submits proposals’ to me. She often thinks I need lots of detail to be able to make the ‘right’ decision. But there’s no correlation between proposal length and success. Consider the following examples:

“Dad, I’ve been talking to Phoebe and we’ve been thinking it would be a great idea to have a sleep-over tonight, I know it’s late and you and Mum are tired but we’ve thought of that and we’ll move the beds around ourselves and we’ll go to sleep early I promise, remember last time Phoebe had a sleepover we were really good and if you say yes I promise I’ll be really good again not just tonight but tomorrow in fact all week, oh go on please please please, and tomorrow morning can we have pancakes for breakfast?”

“Dad, could I stay up for an extra 10 minutes tonight to practise the flute for tomorrow’s concert?”

Getting more nothingness into your writing  

Once you’re on board with the difficult concept that less is actually more when it comes to funding proposals – and I mean really on board – then the great news is that it’s pretty easy to incorporate extra white space into your writing. Here are just a few suggestions:

• Use reasonable spacing between lines – ideally at least 1.15 – and never be tempted to reduce line spacing just to fit more onto each page

• Keep paragraphs short – try to stick to one point or thought per paragraph

• Insert a clear line of space between paragraphs

• Use headings and subheadings, put them on a line of their own, and try to keep them short

• Use bulleted lists when you’re listing multiple points – ideally with no more than three to five items – rather than long sentences with commas, colons and/or semicolons

And remember, although it takes up some valuable space, a well-chosen picture can be worth many words (I think the standard exchange rate is traditionally about 1,000).

The views and opinions expressed in this blog are mine alone and are in no way endorsed by my employer. Factual information and guidance are provided on a 'best-endeavour' basis and may become out of date over time. No responsibility can be taken for any action or inaction taken or not in respect of the content of this blog.