Posted by Jon
Certain proposal textbooks out there place considerable emphasis on providing detailed captions for proposal graphics. You know the sort of thing:
Certain proposal textbooks out there place considerable emphasis on providing detailed captions for proposal graphics. You know the sort of thing:
Figure 4.2 – On-Time Delivery on 25 December. Our team of elves and reindeer have extensive experience of ensuring that your products are delivered on time prior to your fixed deadline, and our driver is well-acquainted with the widest variety of delivery routes worldwide.
Now, it’s great to have captions that, in the (slightly patronising, but fundamentally well-meant) words of the Foundation Level syllabus, “invite the reader to draw the correct conclusions” from your graphics.
Yet I see too many proposals with overly-lengthy graphics that, rather than making things easy for the reader, distract and derail them as they work through your document. And it can feel as if the proposal team has spent more time on the captions that on the main answers to the questions – perhaps because of the relative eye-catching prominence of the graphics (and hence associated labels) on the page.
To my mind, captions should be readable at a glance – and should tell a positive, tailored, active story. But they need to be short and snappy. And they should never be a substitute for getting your message across in the body of your text.
More on this in my next post!
Yet I see too many proposals with overly-lengthy graphics that, rather than making things easy for the reader, distract and derail them as they work through your document. And it can feel as if the proposal team has spent more time on the captions that on the main answers to the questions – perhaps because of the relative eye-catching prominence of the graphics (and hence associated labels) on the page.
To my mind, captions should be readable at a glance – and should tell a positive, tailored, active story. But they need to be short and snappy. And they should never be a substitute for getting your message across in the body of your text.
More on this in my next post!