December grant tip: Little things matter – pay attention to tense in grant writing

When writing a grant application with the goal of getting your message across to the reader, you can communicate not just through the facts you present, but also how you use grammar and sentence structure to present these facts. Take tense, for example. Most of what you write in a grant application should be in the past tense (things that you or others have done, e.g. preliminary studies) or in the future tense (things that you will do, e.g. the proposed work). While the reader may not consciously register these cues, they help put sections of the narrative in context and establish chronology. Use of the present tense is comparatively uninformative, because it lacks these extra “metadata”. That’s not to say that one should never use the present tense, just don’t default to it – think about how you can additionally inform and clarify, not by using more words, but by how you present those words. In a space-constrained environment like a grant application, think about how you can pack as much information – explicit or implied – into each sentence.

A standard recommendation for grant writers is to include a final “pay-off paragraph” at the end of the “Aims” page – where you describe the benefits that will accrue to the field, or your career, if this proposed work is successfully completed. When writing this section, use the future perfect tense, rather than the future tense. So, instead of saying something like “At the end of this project we will show that……”, say “At the end of this project, we will have shown that…..”. In using this language, you’re subtly projecting the narrative into a future where you can look back at what you have achieved – you’re presenting the proposed work as a quietly confident fait accompli, and hopefully planting the seed in the reader’s mind that “of course they’ll successfully complete the work”. Subtle? Maybe. But it will have cost you nothing in terms of space, and anything you can do to bring the reader over to your side is worth pursuing.