Proposal Editing With & Without AI (On Demand)

Course Curriculum

Learning Objectives

Upon course completion, the participants will have learned and be able to put into practice:

• Understanding a proposal editor’s role and key attributes.
• Understanding compliance.
• ​Assessing material and estimating resources required to edit sections.
• ​Optimizing editing time and workflow in a team of editors to save resources.
• ​Using electronic editing tools and professional hard copy markings.
• ​Avoiding typical editing traps and mastering editing techniques to ensure a perfectly clean copy.
• ​Editing content for clarity, compliance, customer language, accuracy, and persuasiveness.
• ​Editing for content while preserving author’s meaning.
• ​Improving the substance of the proposal.
• ​Reducing page count without sacrificing content.
• ​Adhering to the requirements of the Plain English Act.
• ​Automating proposal editing to increase efficiency.
• ​Editing resumes and past performance for length and compelling, relevant language.
• ​Catching showstopper mistakes.
• ​Improving readability while satisfying technical evaluators.
• ​Effective workflow tracking.

Module 1: What it Takes to Be a Stellar Proposal Editor

• Introductions and learning objectives.
• ​The proposal editor’s role in the proposal lifecycle.
• ​Attributes of a great proposal editor.
• ​Mastering diplomacy, providing constructive feedback, and fostering teamwork.
• ​How an editor can have the greatest impact on proposal quality.

Module 2: Setting Up for Success

• Introduction to styles: working with GPO, Chicago, and other style guides.
• ​Checking what style is used for the proposal.
• ​Creating a proposal-specific style guide for the proposal team.
• ​Understanding compliance – how to quickly grasp the structure of the solicitation.
• ​Exercise: Customizing style guide template for your proposal team.

Module 3: Estimating Your Effort and Time

• Identifying different levels of editing.
• ​Assessing the material for content, organization, and writing style.
• ​Skills and effort that different levels of editing require from a proposal editor.
• ​Estimating time and effort required to edit the assigned workload.
• ​Optimizing editing time to save resources while achieving the most professional results.
• ​Determining workflow when working in a team of editors.
• ​Exercise: Estimate the time required to edit the assignment and plan your work.

Module 4: Editing Mechanics

• Using MS Word’s Track Changes and Compare Documents tools effectively.
• ​Developing a systematic approach to electronic editing.
• ​Tracking and merging changes by multiple reviewers.
• ​Editing electronic section copy: secrets to clean and clear editorial feedback.
• ​Editing hard copy: professional editorial markings glossary.
• ​Microsoft Word shortcuts for increased speed and efficiency.
• ​Typical editing traps and how to avoid them.
• ​Four additional editing techniques to ensure a perfectly clean editing copy.
• ​Exercise: Practice and compare the application of two different techniques to demonstrate a difference in editing quality.

Module 5: Substantive Editing

• Maximizing clarity and compliance with the outline and RFP.
• ​Reintroducing RFP and customer’s language.
• ​Identifying and eliminating irrelevant boilerplate.
• ​How to avoid distorting author’s meaning.
• ​Flagging inconsistencies, incomplete information, and ambiguity.
• ​Adding benefits and proof language to improve persuasive qualities of the proposal.
• ​Translating “technicalese” to English: correcting imprecise wording, technical arrogance and lecturing, redundancy, garbled language, confusing thoughts, unknown acronyms, and incomplete information.
• ​Spotting and correcting factual inaccuracies that could kill your section’s rating.
• ​Pinpointing areas that need work.
• ​Revising or reorienting figures and tables.
• ​Exercise: Edit section for content.

Module 6: Structural Editing

• How to cut down the text length to fit within the assigned page limit without sacrificing content.
• ​Editing for better section flow.
• ​Restructuring for more persuasive and proportionate paragraph flow.
• ​Revising introductory sentences.
• ​Organizing unfocused material.
• ​Revising for consistent voice even if multiple writers contributed to proposal development.
• ​Properly introducing figures and tables.
• ​Exercise: Edit section for length and structure.

Module 7: Copy Editing and Proofreading

• Plain English Act’s impact on proposal writing and editing.
• ​Four editing automation techniques to increase editing speed and leverage modern editing tools.
• ​Using spelling and grammar tools effectively.
• ​Making global changes and using Find and Replace effectively.
• ​Techniques to improve proposal readability while satisfying technical evaluators.
• ​Eliminating passive voice, or deciding if and when passive voice is appropriate.
• ​Identifying vague, redundant, or overused words or expressions.
• ​Grammar gaffes every proposal editor should heed.
• ​Grammar and punctuation refresher for the most common proposal errors.
• ​Making finer adjustments such as tone and rhythm.
• ​Editing, titling, and captioning figures and tables for maximum impact.
• ​Ensuring consistency in style for every occurrence.
• ​Exercise: Copy-edit the section for sentences and words.

Module 8: Editing Resumes and Past Performance Sections

• Rules for cutting proposal resumes to the right page count.
• ​Editing past performance sections for compliance, relevancy, length, and consistency.
• ​Workflow tracking tools to ensure you are always organized.
• ​Working with authors to provide the missing information.
• ​Exercise: Edit a set of resumes.

Module 9: Last Touches

• Ten items to check in a proposal for consistency and professional appearance.
• ​What to look for when editing for aesthetics to catch desktop publishing errors.
• ​Techniques for finalizing the copy.
• ​Comparing hard copy edits to the final document to ensure all changes are made correctly and no new errors are introduced.
• ​Generating an acronyms table using tools.
• ​Checking on numbering for figures and tables, and cross-references.
• ​Cleaning up style sheets for fast and reliable formatting.
• ​Generating or updating the table of contents.
• ​Exercise: Identify the items requiring correction prior to proposal production.

Module 10: Recap and Summary