Writing Skills for Proposals and Tenders - 2 day course

Module 1

Writing Skills

Introduction to proposal and tender writing
What is proposal and tender writing?
How is it different from others forms of writing?
What is plain English?
Readability

Writing and words

The four levels of writing
The ten common faults in writing
Problems with words
- Verbs-passive verbs-weak verbs
- Nouns-weak nouns-nominalisation
- Appropriate words

Sentences and punctuation

Sentence structure
Problems with sentences
- Sentence length and structure
- Problems with clauses
- Misplaced modifiers
- Subject-verb agreement
- Parallel construction
- Long sentences
Punctuation
- Punctuation rules and examples
- Hyphens and apostrophes
Alternatives to the sentence

Module 2

How to Write Proposals and Tenders

Good proposal and tender writing style and tone
What is style?
Common style faults, style conventions and Style manuals
Pay attention to the tone of what you write

Audience and task analysis

How knowledge of the audience impinges on writing
Why you need to think about the audience
When to do an audience analysis
How to do audience analysis
Task analysis
Getting it all together-using the matrix concept

Structuring and designing effective proposals and tenders

Organising and planning information
Structuring the document
The concept of information types
How to write a sales pitch
Techniques for proposals and tenders
- persuasive key messages
- audience hot buttons
- how to make sure you write what the tender recipient needs
Getting it all together

With the course you get a substantial manual with full text for all topics. This makes it a great reference book for after the course. The manual contains several extremely valuable appendices containing words and phrases to avoid, commonly misspelt words, words commonly confused or misused, and much more.

Course topics are illustrated with real examples and interactive exercises.

The course is presented by Jill Nicholson