TArticles tagged with: proposal editing

Editing to reduce the length of your proposals

Writers should work within page budgets, but sometimes you need last-minute editing strategies to help shorten a document

At the end of the proposal lifecycle, we’re all looking to cut page count—either to fall within the maximum page count or to increase readability with whitespace. While writers should adhere to page budgets early in the process to avoid last-minute stress, here are three quick editing tasks that will help decrease overall page count. 1. Remove nominalized verbs. Removing nominalized verbs saves space and makes writing easier to read. Nominalization occurs when we turn a verb, adverb, or adjective into a noun. Proposals are typically littered with verbs turned into nouns. Nominalization isn’t grammatically incorrect, but it clutters writing because nominalized verbs have to be paired with a true verb, thus doubling the number of words it takes to describe a simple action. Does all this sound complicated, or give you flashbacks to elementary school? Don’t worry, the principal is easy to understand with the following examples: Nominalized phrase Single-word replacement … Continue reading Editing to reduce the length of your proposals →

Proposal production checklists (Part 4 of 4)

As a follow up to Briana Coleman’s proposal production series, we’re sharing some helpful checklists and tools for you to use in planning your next proposal production plan. Download the MS Word documents and modify them to suit your company and proposals. Lohfeld Consulting Group – editing checklist Editing Checklist: A supplement to your company’s style guide, this tool is useful for your editor to ensure that all elements of the proposal meet specific quality standards…literally, to check that all of your i’s are dotted and t’s are crossed. What checklists do you find indispensable—and what war stories can you share to reinforce the need for checklists? Send your thoughts to me at BWingate@LohfeldConsulting.com, and I’ll share your advice in upcoming posts!

Confessions of a proposal production expert – editing (Part 3 of 5)

This week, Briana Coleman, PPM.APMP shares her top 3 tips for editing a proposal to get within page count—along with a tip about redacted proposals. Your editor should understand the standard style guide you developed as a company standard and use that style guide in editing your proposal. In addition to examining grammar, one-voicing, and style, editors can be very useful in helping authors tighten up sentences and get sections within page count. I once cut five pages from a document simply by using the following tricks. Tip 1: Lengthy team names Many primes with multiple subs will dub themselves The XYZ Company Team in proposals. While having a team name creates brand identity, it can take up a lot of room when repeated 100+ times in a document. Try using Team XYZ, or even better, we/us/our to shorten the character length considerably. You’ll want to use Team XYZ a … Continue reading Confessions of a proposal production expert – editing (Part 3 of 5) →