Additional time period(s) for which the client can, at its sole discretion, opt to continue or extend a contract past the base term.
Bidders submit a price for any option period(s) with their initial proposal. If the client chooses to exercise the option period(s), the contractor is then bound by that price as well as by the original contract terms and conditions.
A run-on sentence walks into
a bar it starts flirting.
With a cute little sentence fragment.
If you don’t see what’s wrong with the first line of this joke, you’re in good company.
Run-ons are a common type of error. Among college students in the United States, run-on sentences are the eighteenth most frequent error made by native English speaker . . .
– grammarlyblog
(That’s from a post titled, “How do you correct run-on sentences it’s not as easy as it seems.” Hahaha.)
Run-on sentence:
Two complete ideas stuck together
without adequate punctuation.
That’s It. Don’t do It.
Do this instead:
A run-on sentence walks into
a bar, and it starts flirting.
Or this:
A run-on sentence walks into
a bar. It starts flirting.
Feeling daring? Try this:
A run-on sentence walks into
a bar: It starts flirting.
How does this happen in Proposal Land? The running-on, not the flirting. Quite often the culprit is writers jamming together existing text from more than one source, or cutting out extraneous text, and not carefully reading the result. That’s it.
As for the sentence fragment (as above & below), it’s just a sentence missing a subject or a verb or (gadzooks) both. They can be effective in small doses, but in large quantities they’re annoying. Choppy.
Often the easy fix for fragments is to attach them to the previous sentence:
They can be effective in small doses,
but in large quantities they’re annoying and choppy.
If that’s awkward to do, then add words to make a complete sentence:
How does this happen in Proposal Land?
By “this” I mean the running-on, not the flirting.
Run-on sentences have been used to interesting effect in literature but have no place in technical writing. Nope, not even one.
Sentence fragments have been used to excellent effect in blogs (ahem) but have little place in technical writing. You can consider using them if you’re writing a summary or introduction that wants some punch.
Just remember: Clarity trumps style.
When written or said with a capital “W,” the Work in Proposal Land is the sum of the products, services, and data that the client wants to buy. Obviously that’s important to know when deciding whether to bid and when making a plan to deliver the Work. But its use goes beyond that.
What’s the Work?
In many situations this is the first question to ask because the answer forms the basis of *any* plan to do, you know, some work:
What’s the scope? What-all has to be done? What shouldn’t I do? What things are optional?
What’s the standard? Am I targeting quick-and-dirty, good-enough, or damn-near-perfect? Does it vary by task? By section?
Who do I work with? Who sends me work, who helps/interferes with my work, and who approves what I’ve done?
What’s the schedule? ASAP? Date (and time) certain? (In Proposal Land, “Whenever I get to it”never seems to be an option.)
What’s. The. Work.
If I don’t know this, I don’t know nuthin’.
The sum of the client’s decisions on how to contract the Work:
At the end of the day, a cliché walks into a bar —
fresh as a daisy, cute as a button,
and sharp as a tack.
We don’t have much occasion to use similes in proposals, but clichés go well beyond that.
Cliche, also spelled cliché, is a 19th-century borrowed word from the French which refers to a saying or expression that has been so overused that it has become boring and unoriginal. – Vocabulary.com
In Proposal Land all technology is leading edge, cutting edge, or state-of-the-art. All transitions are seamless. All reporting is real-time and transparent. All services are high quality, superior, or excellent. All training is just-in-time, all standards are met or exceeded, all results are bottom-line. All management? Responsive. All relationships? Collaborative.
Yup. Boring and unoriginal.
Worse, even when the actual claims are true, these words slide off the reader like water off a duck’s back. I mean, like ice cream off a toddler’s cone. Splat.
Instead, tell them what systems and equipment you’re going to use, what you’re going to do, and how. Specifically. To pick one example from the mush above, let’s look at collaboration:
Is this more work? Uh, yeah. Will it get better marks? Yup. And that’s why we’re here, right? Well, that and being cute as a button.