Tips for clear writing

Our Associate Vice Chancellor, Bob Damrauer, recently offered a key piece of advice to other faculty if they wanted to be successful: "Learn to write a simple declarative sentence, and use it!" This may seem overly simplistic, but in academia, it's surprising how many researchers lose their readers in the jargon and wordiness of their prose. So, with that in mind, I offer some advice for clearer writing.

Clear thinking = clear writing
I actually think I'm stealing this one from Bob Damrauer too, but I don't think he was the first to say it. Regardless, it's true that you cannot hope to write clearly in a grant or in an article if you don't have clarity around what it is you're trying to say. This doesn't mean that free writing can't be a useful tool for getting to clear thinking (see the blog on Writing into clarity), but you can't expect that this free writing will be clear in itself. You need to know what you want to say before you say it.

Check your jargon
If you think you don't use jargon in your writing, you're probably missing the jargon you do use. Certainly, you can spot some of it (think of all the acronyms that you use on a daily basis). But, some of the jargon will be in your blind spot, so it can be helpful to have a layperson read through your writing and let you know what doesn't make sense to them. Once you've identified your jargon, you have a couple of choices: you can pull it out and use a more common parlance, or you can define your terms. The latter often makes the most sense since you want to show that you can talk the talk of experts, but if you don't define your terms and use them consistently, it will be all for nought when your readers don't understand what you're saying.

Use signposts and signals
I once heard a faculty member discourage students from using headings, because he thought that it was a way for them to get around creating clear transitions in their writing. As a Technical Writer, I was horrified! I was also stunned that this faculty wanted papers from his students that were just a sea of text that he would read from start to end. Contrarily, as a reader, I often use a speed-reading trick where, before I start reading, I go through the headings in the entire piece, so that I have a sense of where the writer is taking me. If you took those headings away from me, good luck getting me to read the whole thing and follow it!

Use active voice and avoid long sentences
I realize that speaking in the first person in different academic genres is still frowned upon, and that's fine. However, you can use active voice along with the third person. Instead of saying The experiment will be conducted by the Nishi team, say The Nishi team will conduct the experiment. The active voice usually uses fewer words and is easier to read. Also, keep your sentences short. I'm notorious for drafting paragraph-long sentences. Some of them are readable, and some not. So, I always conduct several read-throughs of my work and force myself to break up sentences or just shorten them. This helps me be concise and clear in my writing.

Resources:
Writing clear, concise sentences - The University of Wisconsin, Madison Writing Center
Clear writing: Ten Principles of Clear Statement - University of Missouri

Give them something to look at

I've certainly pestered you about including visuals in your grants in previous blogs, but I recently gathered more fodder, so I bring it back once again. A year ago, I heard one of our faculty members who was a long time NIH reviewer say he had never seen a grant funded that did not include a visual in the Specific Aims. This floored me and I began sharing this anecdote in all of our seminars. Some argued that they had seen grants funded without visuals, but still to have one long-time reviewer make such a strong statement about visuals? I was sold!

Given my grant-visual evangelizing tendency, I was very excited to get more information on why these visuals in grant applications are important a couple weeks ago. Dr. Bob Murphy, Distinguished Professor of Pharmacology on our Anschutz Medical Campus, gave a talk at our seminar on the NIH Review Process. Dr. Murphy described how those assigned as primary, secondary, and tertiary reviewers on a grant application are usually the only folks who will read the proposal. When a proposal is discussed in a study section meeting, those assigned to a proposal present the proposal and their review to the entire group.  At this time, the specific aims pop up on a computer screen for the rest of the reviewers. As a reminder, all reviewers submit scores for each grant application, and most have not read the applications themselves before they are asked to score them.

Dr. Murphy stressed that when a grant is being discussed that has not been assigned to you as a reviewer, you're trying to listen to the presentations of those to whom it was assigned. Although you have the specific aims pulled up on a computer, you really don't have the time to read prose. You instead depend on the assigned reviewers to explain it. However, although you can't read prose, you can look at a visual that has been strategically placed in the specific aims (you knew this was coming).

If a clear visual helps your reviewer to understand your project and make sense of the presentation/review of your colleague, they're more apt to realize the true brilliance of the project and score it accordingly.

Resources:
How to use visuals in grants - Grant writing for dummies
The incorporation of visuals into grants - Platte

Storytelling in your grant

This week, ORDE offered a panel on Positioning Your Work and Yourself at our Anschutz Medical Campus.  Our panelists included Kathrin Bernt, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, Dana Dabelea, Professor of Epidemiology and Pediatrics, and Anne Libby, Professor of Emergency Medicine. One of the themes that arose in our discussion was the idea of story-telling as a great tool for branding yourself, and especially in your grant. Below are some different ways to use storytelling in your grant.

Tell your story
This idea of storytelling can manifest in some different ways. Some researchers have been successful in sharing their story in a grant. As Dr. Libby suggested, this is a particularly useful strategy when applying for a career development type grant, such as an NIH K grant. For these, sharing your passion and explaining your personal career trajectory can give reviewers a solid sense of who you are and your potential. Reviewers are likely to advocate for a career grant when they have a sense of the applicant and their great potential.

Tell your patient's story
Another approach to storytelling is to integrate patient stories into your grant. If you're able to tie the results of your research to potentially alleviating trauma for your patients, you take your case for your research a step further to not only show the impacts of your work, but to personalize them.

Make your research a story
Dr. Bernt cautioned the group about the use of personal story when it will not make you unique. If you're hearing the same type of story again and again in a grant or in any other venue, it loses its power. However, if a personal story is not going to resonate with reviewers for whatever reason, you can still incorporate story-telling into your grant. This can be done by identifying what makes narrative compelling, things like context and the hook. Certainly, the importance of giving context to your reviewers so they can stick with you is important, but also creating a hook that grabs your reviewers, and invests them in your research story is also smart.

Tell someone else's story
Upon leaving, one of our faculty members shared with us her struggle to use storytelling in her grants. Her research focused on a health issue that wasn't necessarily life threatening, and she had no personal or patient stories that would work. Yet, she found compelling stories on the blogs of those afflicted by the issue or the parents of those afflicted. She was able to translate these stories and concerns into her grants and has found success with this approach. I thought this was a particularly creative strategy.

So, don't be afraid to tell a story in your grant whether it's yours, your patient's, your research's or someone else's. It will make you real and likable in the eyes of reviewers.

Resources
How to win grants with great storytelling - The Grant Training Center
The clues to a great story - Andrew Stanton TED talk