Words to Avoid in Proposals

Avoid Words That Indicate Quantity

Like adjectives, adverbs, nouns, or verbs that indicate quantity or intensity. You should try to avoid using them in your proposal text. Some examples include:

a lot - many - few - several - very - really - extremely - nearly - almost - quite - totally - slightly

Avoid Unnecessary Adverbs, Which Can Obscure Your Points Rather Than Support Them

An adverb is a word or phrase that modifies or qualifies an adjective, verb, another adverb, or a word group. The adverb typically expresses a relation of place, time, circumstance, manner, cause, degree, etc. In the professional writing world, adverbs are the hallmark of a lazy writer. Some examples are:

• truly

• honestly

• just

• almost

• basically

• actually

• definitely

• literally

• essentially

• absolutely

• seriously

• obviously

• certainly

• probably

• basically

• virtually

Avoid Clichés

Clichés are overused words that have lost meaning and/or effectiveness. Examples include:

• best-in-class

• industry-leading

• right-size

• cutting edge

• world-class

• raising the bar

• reinventing the wheel

• hard and fast

• last but not least

• thinking outside the box

Similar to imprecise words and unnecessary adverbs, removing clichés from your proposals will declutter your writing and strengthen your overall message.

Final Thoughts

Reducing or eliminating the use of common crutch words will strengthen the writing, making it clearer and more compelling to the evaluators. This will enable evaluators to focus on and find the content that addresses the evaluation criteria—and help them to score you higher.