Writing Business Bids and Proposals For Dummies

Chapter 10

Applying the Principles of Good Writing: Structuring Your Argument

IN THIS CHAPTER

Structuring your argument

Stating your case clearly

Influencing your readers

Helping readers find what they need

When it comes to writing, the distance between your head and your hands can seem a lot farther than a couple of feet. Many of you know exactly what you want to say, but you may have trouble getting the words and sentences to cooperate. When you’re writing any kind of document, you must be clear or you’ll lose your reader. If you lose your reader when you’re writing proposals, you lose the sale.

In proposals, you must state what you’ll do and how you’ll do it in such a way that your customer’s evaluators quickly understand and agree with you. Your goal is to persuade, and you can’t do that if your reader can’t follow your argument.

In this chapter, you find ways to write your proposal so readers can readily understand it. You find techniques on how best to put words together to make clear sentences and how to put sentences together to express clear ideas. You also find out how to creatively express your argument and how to make sure your customer doesn’t miss the good parts.

Outlining to Guide Your Writing

In Chapter 9, we lay out the parts of a standard proposal for you in order and discuss ways to ensure that you create a comprehensive and expected argument. We say expected because all the parts we recommend make up the schema for a sound proposal argument.

A schema ...