Top questions your reviewers have

Happy New Year! Our faculty researchers have been hard at work over the break, and now I'm reviewing several grant proposals to offer feedback from a technical writing perspective. I realize that when I'm reading proposals, I have a running inner dialogue in my head with the author. More than once, I've found myself asking a question aloud of my author. Sometimes if the author answers my question in the text immediately, the dialogue continues. If the author leaves me hanging, the dialogue turns into a monologue and usually more of a critique.

So, what are these questions that I frequently ask of my author? In the spirit of the New Year, I'll give these countdown style.

5. Why not turn this four-line sentence into two sentences (I had to re-read it three times!)

4. What is this diagram telling me?

3. Why is this project important/innovative?

2. Who will potentially benefit from this research and how will they benefit?

1. What does this acronym/abbreviation stand for? or What does this jargon mean?

Certainly, some of these questions are fundamental to making a case for your proposal, i.e., why is this project important? However, it's amazing how disruptive an ambiguous or hard-to-read diagram or an uninterpretable abbreviation can be for the reviewer. I find that it can almost rise to the level of distraction for me as a reader as excluding key points from the proposal.

Yet, all of these unanswered questions can be caught by your internal reviewers before you submit. So always make sure to line up colleagues, friends, and even your friendly university Technical Writer to help you catch these things before you submit!

Resources:
Six Critical Questions to Launch a Successful Grant Proposal - Robert Porter, PhD
11 Questions You Must Ask Before Your Write - Grant Training Center