“10.3 At the end of the Contract all data shall be handed back to the Authority and the Contractor shall be destroyed”

You know, sometimes one probably shouldn’t submit a “fully compliant” response…

Well, as this is a blog entry related to an APMP event and not a proposal, I’m going to take license and violate the proposal rule that says you should lead with the headline, in this case the headline being the winning entry.

But just announcing the winner without a bit of background, which I hope would create a bit of dramatic tension, wouldn’t be any fun now would it?

I suspect some of you would like to see the cartoon again. So, here it is –

And the finalists’ entries were –

1.    “Can’t your family go to Hawaii without you?” (Anita F.)
2.    “Who knew a 14:00 deadline meant 2pm?” (Gregg K.)
3.     “Just because the client makes computer chips and not potato chips?” (Cynthia M.)

We received a great many entries. Some of these were as simple as “#3”. Others add a little bit of insight, such as “I can really relate to #2, so I vote for that entry.” And quite a few apparently had the need to share their pain, such as “I have experienced the very same thing as alluded to by #1. Here’s what happened to me. I was working on a proposal and … (and then included very specific details as to this person’s experience.)

We tabulated the entries, had the resulted reviewed by an accounting firm (ok, what I really did was ask bookkeeper check my addition) and then sealed the final result in an envelope (not sure why we did that but it seemed the right thing to do.)

The winner of the Third Annual Strategic Proposals Cartoon Caption Contest is (please feel free to provide your own drum roll here), #2 ““Who knew a 14:00 deadline meant 2pm?” submitted by Greg Kulichik.

Please join me in congratulating Greg and the other finalists (In this case, unlike proposals, all three places have their reward – bragging rights for submitting very clever answers.

Jon and I say thanks to everyone who participated. As has been the case for each of the contests, we received some very clever entries, with Greg’s being voted this year’s cleverest!

As was the case for the cartoon caption contests* we ran at the annual APMP conferences the past two years, we would have posted the finalists immediately upon returning from the conference. This year I wasn’t able to do so because someone** wasn’t thinking and packed up the responses with the rest of the material from our booth and shipped it back to the Strategic Proposals US offices.

The materials have finally arrived here in our offices and I’m now able to provide the finalist entries and have our readers vote on them.

We received quite a few responses at the conference and, not surprisingly, many of them hit very close to home. Also not surprisingly, many of these (about 20 or so) were related to extensions (I.e. “He didn’t see the notice that they had given us an extension”. John S.) and the turnaround time (“I just asked him to reread the entire thing before we submit it…in 20 minutes.” Tom L.) Another favorite topic was the impending deadline/due date (See one of the finalist entries.) A somewhat surprising topic was pizza (“I just told him they were out of pepperoni.” Submitted by Neil E.). We even had a Disney related entry (see honorable mentions.)

As it is each year, it was tough to come up with the finalists but, after much debate, lobbying and a bit of whining, we were able to come up with an agreed top three entries.

Our two honorable mentions are –

“When did his eyes start bleeding?” (Chris J.)
“He can’t find his Mickey ears.” (Alexandra M-J)

Our three finalists (in alphabetical order of the last name of the submitter) are –

1.    “Can’t your family go to Hawaii without you?” (Anita F.)
2.    “Who knew a 14:00 deadline meant 2pm?” (Gregg K.)
3.     “Just because the client makes computer chips and not potato chips?” (Cynthia M.)

You can cast your vote (one per reader) by sending an e-mail with the subject line “Cartoon Caption Contest” and stating within your mail the number of the entry for which you wish to vote. Please send your mail to bj@strategicproposals.com. We’ll collect votes for one week from the date of this post and then announce the winner.

*We ran our first Cartoon Caption Contest in 2008. This contest is based on and modeled after the long running and very popular cartoon caption contest done by the New Yorker magazine. Entries are submitted, from which three finalists are chosen. The readership then votes for their favorite and a winner is determined based on receiving the largest number of votes.
For each contest, Jon and I come up with an idea for a cartoon and then this is developed and drawn by Mike Parkinson of 24 Hour Company. The cartoon is distributed to conference participants and they then submit their entry (or entries, as participants may submit as many ideas as they wish) and we post it on a board at the conference. Participants at the conference tell us they really enjoy seeing the ideas of their fellow members.

**Okay, I admit it. I was the one to put them in the box. But those supporting me should have known to check to see if I had, yet another, bright idea that wasn’t quite thought through and which needed to be corrected.)

It’s called wikiHow, and it has a rather lovely section on “English Grammar”. (Interestingly, one of my current bugbears is excessive capitalisation in documents – I can’t help wondering whether a more modern usage for the section’s title would be “English grammar”!).

Amongst the topics covered are sections on how to:

• avoid colloquial (informal) writing
• use italics
• understand the difference between passive and active sentences
• improve your grammar
• use “who” and “whom” correctly.

If you’re stuck for something to read in your lunch hour, or just want to brush up on your skills, the site makes for fascinating reading. Take that section on how to ‘use italics’, for example. Much as italics can be useful to pick out specific words in a sentence, I’ve long disliked reading proposals that contain long italicised sentences – they always seem harder on the eye, and the italics somehow seem to trivialise the material.

Here, therefore, is an overview of the site’s guidance on the seven areas in which the authors recommend or mandate the use of italics, including some of their illustrative examples:

1. Use italics to provide emphasis or contrast in running Roman text… “He had managed to eat not nine, but ten whole cookies.”
2. Use italics to denote titles… “I just can’t stop reading The Collins Pocket English Dictionary.”
3. Use italics for foreign words discussed in a sentence… “The Latin word caudex roughly translates as ‘blockhead’.”
4. Use italics for foreign words or phrases not considered fully part of the English language… “I just got the weirdest feeling of déjà vu.”
5. Apply italics when citing English words [instead of using single quotes]… “I love the word flabbergasted.”
6. Italicize names of vehicles… “The Enola Gay.”
7. Keep in mind that certain disciplines have various specific purposes for italics. Two of the more common examples are in biology and law (legal cases)… “The famous case of Gideon v. Wainwright was a landmark in American legal history… Homo sapiens, the name for the human species, belongs to the genus Homo.”

Their section on punctuation – with some really good pointers on common pitfalls – is another one I particularly enjoyed.

Of course, the web’s never really going to be a reliable substitute for your favourite reference tome (such as my well-thumbed Cambridge copy-editing handbook). But the wikiHow pages appear to be full of well-written, accurate, practical advice and the site’s certainly worth a browse.

As well as a session (“Proposal World”) from the main stage with BJ on the Thursday morning of the event, I’m presenting a slot on “The Excellent Executive Summary”. I submitted my final paper last week, and the good folks at APMP were kind enough to review it in detail.

They came back with the observation that they’d apparently found a “punctuation error”. The issue concerned was a box in which I’d used the phrase “e.g. RFP”, provoking them to observe:

there should be a comma after “e.g.” and before the RFP acronym, so it looks like “e.g.,”

This rather surprised me, so I thought I’d check it out. After all, if “e.g.” without a comma is incorrect, I’ve made proofreading errors in pretty much every document I’ve written over the years! And a reliable online source made for interesting reading:

For American English usage, you should always put a comma right after both “i.e.” and “e.g.”, as shown in the examples above. For British English usage, do not put a comma right after either “i.e.” or “e.g.”.

Well, I never knew that! I’m used to the fact that spellings are sometimes different on opposite sides of the pond – but I’d never picked up on this particularly subtle difference in punctuation.

Of course, were the APMP conference a US event, I’d clearly translate my material into American English. But it’s not – it’s an international event that happens to take place in the States, with an audience drawn from across the globe. As such, I think it’s more appropriate to present in my native language! Yet even that’s an interesting point for debate…

The current marketing message for diamonds is, “Give her a diamond and she will be rendered speechless.”

As Ron points out, this is spin on the industry’s intended message, which is, “Give her an expensive piece of jewelry and it will shut her up for a while.”

Definitely makes the message more shiny, don’t you think? And, as Ron would point out, the needs of both parties involved get what they are hoping for.

(And yes, I do realize I’ll no doubt put up with some flack from those who are easily offended. for posting this. Fortunately, I know that our readers, aka proposal people, by the very nature of their work, are not the type of people to be easily offended. Heck, we work with [put up with might be more correct] sales people on a daily basis, right? ☺)

In a recent AP article on the Westminster Dog Show being held this week in New York (at Madison Square Garden, should you care to know or go.) I spotted this delightful typo:

She is a hot dog, this little Sadie. Tongue out, and wagging tail up, the perky, 4-year old Scottish terrier has won more than 100 Best-in-Show ribbons and is the overwhelping favorite to complete dogdom’s Triple Crown this week at Westminster. She’s already charmed the judges, in fact. (Yeah, and her overwhelping would suggest she has charmed her fair share of male dogs as well.)

Someone I shared this with suggested the typo could have also been “overyelping”. That would have been fun too.

As the story goes, a New York City plumber once wrote to the Bureau of Standards to report the success he had in using hydrochloric acid to clean out clogged drainpipes. Responding in typical government fashion, the bureau wrote, “The efficacy of hydrochloric acid is indisputable, but the corrosive residue is incompatible with metallic permanence.”

When the plumber wrote back to say how pleased he was that the bureau agreed with him, the bureau urgently responded, “We cannot assume responsibility for the production of toxic and noxious residue as a result of using hydrochloric acid and suggest you use an alternative procedure.”

This second letter made the plumber even happier with his discovery, so once again he wrote to say how glad he was that the bureau liked his idea. This time the bureau broke down and used plain language to warn the plumber: “Don’t use hydrochloric acid. It eats the hell out of the pipes.”

Plain language. A novel concept. Goes a long way towards fostering understanding.

We’ll be taking a seasonal break from posting for the next couple of weeks. See you back here at the very start of the new decade…

With very best wishes to all of our many readers

Jon and BJ – and Proposal Panda!

The book I’m referring to is, The Art of Racing in the Rain (author – Garth Stein) and I give it my highest recommendation (something I reserve for a rare few books, such as Water for Elephants, another brilliant read and one I also recommend.)

I suspect leading with the fact that the story is told by a dog might cause some people to be reluctant to read this wonderful book. In fact, I’m sure it is. If I wasn’t confident that the majority of readers of this blog trust me to provide recommendations they ultimately agree with (for the most part), I might have presented this book differently (it’s about knowing your audience, right?). I could have said, “This is a beautifully told and written story of family, love, devotion, caring, loss and ultimate triumph.”

You are forewarned; do not read the first page unless you have several hours of reading time available. :-)

–

* See, as a dog lover I am biased. And several people to whom I’ve recommended this book and who have subsequently read it have found it to be a great read.