July « 2009 « We Write For You

Winning grant proposals must be error-free

July 31, 2009 | Posted in: Competitive Writing, Grantwriting, Nonprofits | Tags: editing, grammar, grant writing, Grantwriting, judging, nonprofit, not-for-profit, proofreading, proposal scores, scoring, scoring criteria, selection criteria, We Write For You, wewriteforyou.com, winning grants, writing tips |

A winning grant proposal is error-free.

In the last post, we talked about how clear and grammatically-correct writing alone is not enough to get your proposal funded. On the other hand, a proposal that meets funding criteria and is submitted by a worthy organization will not be funded if it contains writing and grammatical errors.

Some proposal reviewers (judges) score sections filled with grammatical and typographical errors in the lowest range of points available for the section. Even I, a copyeditor and grammarian, am amazed at the large number of points often deducted.

These are the explanations I have been given:

“A sloppy proposal indicates that the organization would operate a sloppy project.”

“They must have put this proposal together overnight, since they clearly didn’t have it proofread.”

“I don’t think these people can be very bright.”

“The proposal was too hard to read – the sentences went on forever and there were no commas to indicate pauses or necessary separations between words.” (more…)

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In grant competitions, well-written is not enough

July 28, 2009 | Posted in: Competitive Writing, Grantwriting | Tags: Fundraising, grant details, grant writing, Grantwriting, judging, nonprofit, not-for-profit, proposal scores, RFP, RFP requirements, scoring, scoring criteria, We Write For You, wewriteforyou.com, winning grants |

Winning the grant is all about the score.

An acquaintance asked me to look at his nonprofit’s grant application and tell him why it wasn’t funded in a recent grant competition.

Before even looking at the proposal, I reminded him that the process was highly competitive and he was in good company with other fine, but unfunded, proposals.

“We hired a professional writer to make sure that the proposal was well written with no grammatical errors. We thought that would make us good,” he said.

He was right that proposals that are hard to understand or have grammatical errors wind up in the low end of the ranking. In grant competitions, however, a well-written proposal is only one factor influencing the application’s score.

The problem with the proposal in question jumped out at me almost immediately. The writer, not having written a grant proposal before, did not understand the scoring system. She had to fit answers to questions into a document with a required, 6-page limit. She used a disproportionate amount of space on low-scoring questions, and very little space on questions that carried a high score. (more…)

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The Best Writing Tip Ever: Put your words in the right order

July 24, 2009 | Posted in: General Writing, The Best Writing Tip Ever, Uncategorized | Tags: Bale, Batman, Christian Bale, Dark Knight, editing, editing tips, Farmiga, grammar, Heath Ledger, Joker, Ledger, Orphan, Sarsgaard, We Write For You, wewriteforyou.com, writing tips |

When one guys wearing makeup and the other ones wearing a mask, its rather important to know whos who.

When one guy's wearing a mask and the other one's wearing a wig and makeup, it's rather important to know who's who.

For our latest installment of the Best Writing Tip Ever series, let’s touch on a subject that seems like a no-brainer, but it’s a mistake that can appear in everything from a text message to, let’s say, an article in the Los Angeles Times.

Case in point: today’s Times review of the psychological thriller Orphan. Glenn Whipp’s brief article reads just fine until this sentence:

The film does boast fine, slumming performances from Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsgaard, playing John and Kate, the couple coping with Esther’s alarming antics.

True, Whipp writes elsewhere that Orphan boasts a surprising twist, but we’re pretty sure the twist isn’t that Vera plays John and Peter plays Kate.

Granted, Whipp didn’t use the word respectively in his sentence to indicate “in the order given,” but switching the order mid-sentence still makes for confusing reading.

And if the error wasn’t clear because of the genders, we’d be left thinking the actors played the wrong roles.

For example: either of the two people who never saw The Dark Knight certainly would get the wrong idea if one wrote “Christian Bale and Heath Ledger provide dynamic performances as the Joker and Batman.”

See more entries in the Best Writing Tip Ever series by clicking here.

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Trailer conventions that have to go? Cool, but bad grammar has to go first.

July 14, 2009 | Posted in: General Writing | Tags: FilmHype.Net, grammar, movie posters, movie trailers, Old Dogs, proofreading, We Write For You, wewriteforyou.com, writing, writing tips |

FilmHype.Net ripped on the "Old Dogs" trailer, leaving it to us to rip on this awful, painfully Photoshopped poster.

I care about good writing, but we don’t expect everyone to be perfect all of the time. Misspellings and typos happen.

However, it’s impossible to stress too highly how important it is to make a good impression right up front in anything you write. If you have an important 10-page document, I’d love for you to carefully proofread all 10 pages.

But at the very least, make sure the first few pages are golden. If nothing else, the first page must be pristine.

Case in point: I’d never before heard of FilmHype.Net, but there’s a link to an article on the site today at the Internet Movie Database. As film buffs, we check out IMDb all the time. And the link sounded interesting: “Movie Trailer Conventions That Have To Go.”

I was intrigued. So I clicked on the link and read the article’s introduction. Here’s the first paragraph (the bold emphasis is mine):

In an industry filled with sequels, prequels, remakes, and sell outs, it’s sometimes difficult to find something truely noteworthy within the realm of cinema. But even worse than the films themsleves are the trailers that promote them; born from a world lacking any originality and at the hands of a single editor whose name is presumably Satan.

And suddenly I wasn’t very interested in the article anymore (you can find it here).

I realized that the writer might make some pretty good points in the article, but an opening paragraph that has at least two grammatical mistakes any high-schooler should understand (plus a third that’s admittedly a little nitpicky) makes me tune out immediately. (more…)

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Grammar Girl (referencing AP Style) takes on “To tweet or to Twitter”

July 11, 2009 | Posted in: General Writing, Outside the Lines | Tags: AP, AP style, AP Stylebook, Grammar Girl, Mignon Fogarty, tweet, tweeting, Twitter, Twittering, We Write For You, writing, writing tips |

This is really little more than a link to a recent post by Grammar Girl, a/k/a Mignon Fogarty, who does some fun writing about all things grammar at her site.

As Ms. Fogarty notes, the Associated Press recently released its 2009 AP Stylebook, which many organizations use to determine their default “style” for word usage. It’s an invaluable reference that we at We Write For You use as our style guide as well.

In her post, she points out that the AP ultimately decided that you can say a Twitter user is Twittering or tweeting, whichever verb you prefer. Note that “tweet” and “tweeting” are not capitalized, while “Twittering” is. There’s some more interesting stuff here, so we highly recommend you check out the post here.

P.S. If you Twitter or tweet, be sure to follow us on Twitter. You can find us here, and you can check out Grammar Girl right here.

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Before you write your resume (and especially before you write your cover letter)…

July 5, 2009 | Posted in: General Writing, Resumes and Cover Letters | Tags: cover letter, Hot Pockets, resume, We Write For You, wewriteforyou.com, writing, writing tips |

If you read our previous post on resumes, we pointed out how important it is to tailor your resume for the particular position you’ve targeted. (And if you missed that one, read it here right now.)

Before you sit down to write that tailored resume, whether revising or starting from scratch, you need to refer to the one critical document that will determine what information to include or omit:

The list of job qualifications.

That’s right, the template for your resume should not be a list of stuff you’ve done in the past. The template should be what qualities the employer is looking for regarding this particular job. And this will be even more important in the cover letter.

Think about it this way: you’re looking for the perfect mate on an online dating site. Let’s say you’re looking for a woman, and you’ve come across one you believe would make the perfect partner. She lists all of her turn-ons, and they include: outdoor activities, dancing, kittens and romantic dinners.

So you decide to give her a “wink” online to gauge her interest. But the information in your profile notes that you spend all of your time playing video games, you hate to dance, you’ve only had dogs as pets and you only eat Hot Pockets.

Think there’s any chance of getting a date? (more…)

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