Practice Doesn't Make Perfect, Editing Does

One time while playing Scrabble, one of our team members was about to rock a triple-word score with the word ‘bizare,’ until she realized that the word is more properly spelled “bizarre” or “bazaar,” depending on what you’re trying to say.

This anecdote came up when we did our weekly search for bizarre holidays (there’s just always something to celebrate!) and we realized that this week is National Scrabble Day. April 13th is the anniversary of Scrabble’s inventor, Alfred Mosher Butts.

So, in honor of the fun of Scrabble and all word games, and the memory of our team member’s lost triple-word score, this week we’re offering tips and tricks for eliminating errors from your funding proposals. In many posts about grant writing, there’s a lot of emphasis on the act of writing of grants and other documents (heck, “write” is even in our company name!) but at least half of the writing process is actually editing.  Before you hit ‘send’ or drop them in the mailbox to funders, your grant proposals and other documentation should be as polished and error-free as possible.

To achieve the Nirvana of zero errors, we have a few tips:

Let it Rest

After you finish writing the first draft of your document, let it sit for a few days. If you can, let it rest for a week or more. This does two things—first of all, it means that you have given yourself enough time to make the deadline. Padding those few days of editing onto the end of your timeline for a project will help you feel more relaxed about what you’re writing. Relaxed, unhurried eyes often catch more errors than do those operated by people who are in a big rush. Even if you are close to deadline (and hey, sometimes it happens) try to create a mental break between the writing and the editing of a document. Get up and get yourself a cup of coffee and jog around the block. Try to switch gears from being creative and persuasive to being analytical and precise.

When you’re ready to edit, we suggest you break your work into three sessions: 1) for checking content and meaning; 2) for checking spelling and grammar errors; and 3) for checking stylistic and formatting errors.

Checking for Content and Meaning

During the first stage of your editing, you should double check what you have written against the requirements. Have you addressed all of the sections about which the funder requested information? Have you been as specific as possible? Included relevant examples, if necessary? Backed up your hypotheses with data?

During this stage of editing, you can make structural changes to the document and may even find that you’re inspired to rewrite whole sections. This is the stage that is most helped by waiting between the writing and the editing. This is also the stage when you want to be most careful of any length restrictions. Cut length as necessary.

Checking for Spelling and Grammar

Even the best, most persuasively written proposal will look amateurish if you submit it with errors in spelling, grammar or punctuation. While even the best of us make these mistakes from time to time, the secret to a flawless proposal is being able to catch your own errors before you send a document on.

Run Spell Check

Whether you use Microsoft Word, OpenOffice, Pages or another word processing software, it will have a function for checking your spelling. Make sure that you run the spell check tool, and don't just rely on visually catching words that are underlined in red.

Also be on the lookout for words that won’t show up in spell check; for example, words that sound the same, but mean different things. Some of us accidentally type what we “here hear” when we think. You should also have a dictionary handy, just in case you get a mental blank on a challenging word. For example, Word’s spell check accepts both “traveller” and “traveler,” but which one is correct?*

The most important spelling errors to avoid are in words that reference a person, place or program that is connected to the project for which you are requesting funding. Here in Alaska, we have place names that derive from Alaska Native languages, as well as from Russian, French and others. Keep a cheat sheet by your computer of the correct spelling of place names and personal names used in your proposal so that you can quickly reference that you have spelled them all without errors.

Don't ignore the red and green lines of your software's check tools.

Run Grammar Check Though less common than spelling errors, grammar mistakes can pop up in your document as well. After you’re sure that everything is spelled correctly in your proposal, run a grammar check tool. Grammar check will help you find extra spaces within the document, inappropriate commas, and repeated words, as well as any subject-verb disagreement or sentence fragments. The rules for English grammar are not always written in stone—and if you write emails, social media posts or a blog, you probably break those rules from time to time to good effect. But in a request for funding or other important document for your nonprofit, you’ll want to make sure that you write as clearly and by-the-book as possible. On this blog, we often bend the rules of formal writing. In fact, just two sentences ago, we started a sentence with the word “but.” But we wouldn’t do that on a grant proposal!

Don’t be the kind of writer who thinks that a grammatically correct sentence needs to be ten miles long. The rule of thumb with checking grammar is that your meaning needs to be clear. If you feel that your sentences are muddied by too many whiches, thats and moreovers, rewrite the sentence to be shorter and clearer. Even if the sentence is grammatically correct, you need to make sure that it’s also readable.

Checking for Style and Format

Quick Tips:

• Ask a co-worker to be your “second pair of eyes” and read through the text as well. Often, you’ll be surprised at what you missed.
• Read the text aloud to catch errors in meaning.
• Print the document, if you find that editing on the computer is slow.
• Read the document on a tablet computer or larger monitor if you don’t wish to print it.
• Repeat the editing stages as often as necessary.
• When completing an online application, write your original text in a document first, not directly into an online application.

Many grant applications have strict proposal guidelines they hope nonprofit applicants will follow. These guidelines not only often refer to the content of your document, but they address style and format as well.

When you are satisfied that your content, spelling and grammar are all as clean as can be, don’t forget to check the formatting of your document before you send it off.

Here’s a quick checklist of settings that are often addressed in application guidelines:

• Font (both style, e.g. Times New Roman, and point, e.g. 12)
• Margins
• Line spacing
• Indentation
• Page numbers

Those are our recommendations for editing your grant proposals and other documents before sending them. Do you have any to add?

*Both are correct—it just depends on your audience! “Traveler” with one L is usually used in the United States, but “traveller” with two Ls is more widely used in Canada, the UK, and other British Commonwealth countries.