Continuing efforts to be concise...

[rivka]

Current length of the research plan:14 pages. Maximum allowable length: 12 pages. Only two pages to go. Sadly, I only have two pages left to edit, and since they include my entire data analysis plan I don't think I'll be able to cut them out entirely. So I will still need to cut, cut, cut. But damn, 25 pages to 14 is a pretty good start.

Once I work through these two pages, I will have a complete draft![1] Yay me! I can send it off to my mentor and to my very kind NIMH Program Official. Maybe they'll know what else I can cut.


[1] Except for the project narrative, the Facilities and Resources section, the revised biosketches, and the appendices. Mercifully the human subjects section stays the same. And the budget. The budget is done.

Updated to add: 13! 13 pages! I am the awesomest person who has ever been awesome! I got it down to 13 pages 10 lines, and then realized that I would totally gain more space once I formatted my references as numbers rather than in-text Endnote tags. And it saved a TON! Go me!

Comments

[rivka.livejournal.com]

NIH is pretty specific. Let's see...

Use an Arial, Helvetica, Palatino Linotype or Georgia typeface, a black font color, and a font size of 11 points or larger. A symbol font may be used to insert Greek letters or special characters; the font size requirement still applies. Type density, including characters and spaces, must be no more than 15 characters per inch. Type may be no more than six lines per inch.

I'm using Arial, which appears to be the most compressed of all of these. Changing to Palatino Linotype ballooned the length to 16 pages. Alas!

My mentor suggested dropping the spaces between paragraphs in the research plan, and going to indents and bold underlined section headers instead. I am dubious; I think that will really affect readability in material this dense. She thinks reviewers will forgive me because they'll be so sympathetic to my plight.

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

I checked with my test text, and Georgia came out slightly shorter than Arial, a handful of lines. And, being a serif font, maybe it does improve readability (but I hear that was disproved, so who knows?).

Serious point on readability: paper and screen have different resolution. Even with a good monitor, it can lead to slight differences. A lot of on-screen infelicities can just vanish.