Last week, I was reading an early proposal draft and after a few minutes of reading landed, once again, on my favorite recommendation: “This should be a table!” So let me tell you why I say this so often and why so many authors push back against it. 

The usual pushback I get is along the line of: “Yes, I hear you, but we don’t have the space for it.” Well, do you want your proposal to stand out from the competition through a clear and compelling argument? I guess you do and if so, tables are your friends. What you don’t have space for in a page-limited proposal is to repeat information. That’s the trap most new authors fall in. They don’t see how they can have space for summarizing the key points in a table in addition to the lengthy description they already have in their draft. 

The answer is that you do not want to and in fact should not repeat that information. It is fine to initially lay out the information in long prose. This is usually the fastest way of getting the data out of your brain. But whenever you go through several different scenarios with associated outcomes or parameters, laying this out in a grid a.k.a. a table is the easiest format for readers. It simply requires less mental effort when you don’t have to hold these relationships in your mind. Instead, they are right there for you to see on the page. 

Not all tables are created equal though. When you have a table with many empty or repeating cells, you probably haven’t landed yet on a clear structure. Additionally, clear row and column labels are a must. Once you combine such a table with a concise caption that tells readers why you are showing the data and what claim they support, you have a winner. After you have done all that work, you get to delete the prose that you started with. Yes, in proposals it is best to say what you have to say once, say it right, and move on. That has the added benefit of not having to worry about consistency between different versions of the same material. Based on my experience, in nine out of ten cases the finished table plus caption will take up less space than what you started with.

Tables usually take up less space, are easier to follow, and therefore reduce the workload on the reviewer. So why don’t authors start with them, and have lots of them, in their first drafts? The catch is, you knew there was going to be one, they take more work by the author. They require you to think through your arguments and make any logical gaps painfully obvious. When you are working through your first draft, they are not the first thing that flows from your fingers onto the screen. And that’s why they are powerful. They require you as the author to do more of the work that you may be tempted to leave to the reader. And you may have guessed it, reviewers do not like to work hard. Or more accurately, you are competing with other proposals that ask less of the reviewer. Don’t you want your proposal to be the one that is easy to say yes to? 

That is why first drafts rarely contain all the tables they could. This is why authors at first struggle to make space for tables and their captions. This is why winning proposals usually have many well crafted tables. That is why I so often get to recommend turning prose into a table. I make that recommendation because I want to make it easy for reviewers of your proposal to say yes to your project. If you make it easier for reviewers, your chances of winning are going way up. Best of luck!