Professionals in healthcare spend a lot of time writing, from clinic notes to research notes, articles and grant proposals. We study how to write for our professional peers, but there are different challenges to writing for an outside audience. When I was approached to write my first book, the editor specifically asked for a writing sample to prove I could write for the general public, because those challenges are so different from what we usually do.
Last week, an article was published in Washington Technology about how word choices can impact on the credibility of proposals. They were thinking proposals to government agencies in general, but I immediately thought, “grant proposals.” The same issues often come into play, and how to write convincingly for government funding agencies is important to all of us. The article gave details about most common errors and how to identify them — when words are a crutch or a boast, vague or timid, slang or jargon, redundant or unnecessary qualifiers.
Bob Lohfeld: 100 words that kill your proposal:
http://washingtontechnology.com/articles/2012/07/20/insights-lohfeld-words-proposal.aspx?s=wtdaily_230712