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NIH Grant writers: If you are adopting a style variant to save space so that you can jam more words into the page limits you are almost certainly decreasing your application’s chances.
Acronym Abuse: At a minimum, make sure you redefine them once per section, perhaps even once per page.
Figure Legend Abuse: You can use smaller font and get away with it. But then you has better not try to smuggle in methods results narrative and discussion. Keep it simple. Or use the proper font size
Citations: Author, Date. Numbered is leaving points on the table. Don’t do that.
Headers and white space. Use them liberally. Even a 6pt line is better than no space.
Bold or italic font is not a substitute for white space. These serve other functions.
Orphan/widow control can be safely turned off imo.
There is no such thing as a “footnote” in NIH grant applications. This is not another way to sneak in a bunch of tiny font text.
Do not use the Vertebrate Animals section to describe all of your methods in place of a description in the research plan.
These are the basics. They keep being said in various ways by lots of people. Yes. And yet applicants still make bad choices all the time. Don’t make bad choices in pursuit of wedging in more text.
The fact that you have one or more colleagues, or yourself, that got grants funded with these mistakes is irrelevant. That happened *despite* these errors. Always think of it that way.
