Choosing a style and design

Proposals do come in many forms and, occasionally, they may be frivolous or comic. But whenever you suggest changing people’s lives or spending someone else’s money, show a little respect and humility.

Use a formal style. Professional proposals — especially those seeking grant money — are typically written in a high style, formal and impersonal, almost as if the project would be jeopardized by reviewers detecting the slightest hint of enthusiasm or personality. (define your style) Academic audiences are often just as poker-faced. So use a formal style in proposals you write for school when your intended readers are formidable and “official”— professors, deans and provosts, or administrators (and pay attention to their titles!).

Observe the no-nonsense tone Thao Tran adopts early in an academic essay whose title alone suggests its sober intentions: “Coping with Population Aging in the Industrialized World.”

Leaders of industrialized nations and children of baby boomers must understand the consequences of population aging and minimize its economic effects. This report will recommend steps for coping with aging in the industrialized world and will assess counterarguments to those steps. With a dwindling workforce and rising elderly population, industrialized countries must take a multistep approach to expand the workforce and support the elderly. Governments should attempt to attract immigrants, women, and elderly people into the workforce. Supporting an increasing elderly population will require reforming pension systems and raising indirect taxes. It will also require developing pronatalist policies, in which governments subsidize child-rearing costs to encourage births. Many of these strategies will challenge traditional cultural notions and require a change in cultural attitudes. While change will not be easy, industrialized nations must recognize and address this trend quickly in order to reduce its effects.

Point of view is impersonal: This report rather than I.

Purpose of proposal is clearly explained.

Premises and assumptions of proposal are offered in abstract language.

Use a middle style, when appropriate. Shift to a middle style when you need to persuade a general audience or whenever establishing a personal relationship with readers might help your proposal.

It is possible, too, for styles to vary within a document. Your language might be coldly efficient as you scrutinize previous failures or tick off the advantages of your specific proposal. But as you near the end of the piece, you might decide another style would better reflect your vision for the future or your enthusiasm for an idea. Environmentalist David R. Brower offered many technical arguments to explain why his radical proposal for draining Lake Powell would make commercial sense. But he concluded his appeal on a more emotional note:

The sooner we begin, the sooner lost paradises will begin to recover — Cathedral in the Desert, Music Temple, Hidden Passage, Dove Canyon, Little Arch, Dungeon, and a hundred others. Glen Canyon itself can probably lose its ugly white sidewalls in two or three decades. The tapestries can reemerge, along with the desert varnish, the exiled species of plants and animals, the pictographs, and other mementos of people long gone. The canyon’s music will be known again, and “the sudden poetry of springs,” Wallace Stegner’s beautiful phrase, will be revealed again below the sculptured walls of Navajo sandstone. The phrase, “as long as the rivers shall run and the grasses grow,” will regain its meaning.

Place names listed have poetic effect.

Lush details add to emotional appeal of proposal.

Final quotation summarizes mission of proposal.

Pay attention to elements of design. Writers often incorporate images, charts, tables, graphs, and flowcharts to illustrate what is at stake in a proposal or to make comparisons easy. Images also help readers imagine solutions or proposals and make those ideas attractive. The SmartArt Graphics icon in the Microsoft Word Gallery opens up a range of templates you might use to help readers visualize a project. (think visually)