I Can Name That Tune in 3 Notes
Those of you who are old enough might remember the title as the tag line for the show, ‘Name That Tune’. On the show, the objective was to recognize a song having heard the least number of notes. (Yes Jon, this probably was before your time though I am starting to think you might not be quite as young as you’d like to think you are. :) )
I think our job as proposal professionals has an element of the above to it. That is, we need to be able to present information using fewer, rather than more words. Sometimes this is stated (RFP instructions – “The Executive Summary may not exceed 1500 words”) and sometimes it is just following ‘best practice’ (Proposal reviewer – “Uh, I think this 35,895 word section on our company history might need to be edited down a bit.”)
The concept of presenting a message with the minimum amount of information came to mind today while driving when I saw a license plate with the letters “ZPTDODA”. Upon seeing this I thought, “It’s really cool that a person could present this commonly known phrase with only 7 letters.”
Now, I’ll admit it. I’m a big fan of creative license plates. And I’m fortunate in that I live in a state (that being the geographical type, in this case NH, as opposed to the psychological such as ‘denial’ – nice try though, Jon) that allows 7 letters on a license plate.
Some of my other favorites license plates are “10SNE1”, “NTDEDYT”, “O2BFIT” and one which was on an older Lincoln Continental (a rather large car for those of you not familiar with it) which was “DAYAHT”. Perhaps you’ve got a few of your own. If so, please feel free to post and share them here.
Each of these plates manages to express a word/phrase/message using a minimum amount of letters. As proposal professionals, I think we should keep this concept in mind as we edit our documents and seek to use fewer, rather than more, words.
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Good blog! ;-)
Fewer words are great but fewer letters isn’t always so wonderful! :) Can you please translate the license plates? I got Zippity-doodah; it’s the others I’m struggling with. Thanks!
Along the lines of DAYAHT, I had an ‘83 Cadillac which was late-model when I owned it in the late ’90s — all white, two-door (two-REALLYHEAVY-doors), huge-sized Deville model. The license plate was “QE III”. (Jon may appreciate that one, too.)
Teresa,
Are you really ready to give up that easily? Anyone care to tell Teresa what the letters stand for?
Teresa:
10SNE1 = Tennis anyone?
NTDEDYT: Not Dead Yet
O2BFIT: Oh, to be fit?
Well done. Now how about a few favorites of your own?
I’d also be interested to hear what some of you have for vanity plates. Perhaps there’s a proposal related plate or two amongst the gang here? (I’ve seen a couple over the years)
As for myself, yes, I do have vanity plate. No, there are not proposal related.
For those who might be interested in such trivia, my vehicle plate is ‘Turkiye’, which is the Turkish spelling for the country name (many of you will be aware my wife Azra is from Turkey. Her plate is “LOKUM”, which is a Turkish connfection as known as “Turkish Delight”). Previous plates I’ve had are, “AKA-BJ” and “WSKIER1″