Is Your Work Necessary or Critical?
Necessary and critical are synonyms but not equal. The former is more neutral, the latter more promotional, market-y.
Which one should you use if you’re making a claim? Research from the National Academy of Sciences analyzed over 10 years of grant applications and found that more promotional language increases grant success.
The relationship is really strong. The median use of promotional words across thousands of grants was 1 for every 100 words.
Increasing this to 2 promotional words per 100 almost doubles the chance of success, from 11% to 21%.
What causes this? Promotional words (see word cloud for examples) have more positive potency, making them more likely to be seen and given attention.
Is this effect writers dialing up the hype meter or are the claims justified? Scientists seem to be a pretty honest lot. Additional analysis showed more hype words were correlated with more inherent innovativeness.
Your pitch is better because it’s innovative. You get more attention by justifiably tooting your own horn.
Don’t fake it till you make it. Just make it and lay claim to it.
Kevin
One response to “Is Your Work Necessary or Critical?”
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Or as one boss used to tell me “Never use a boring word when you can use a powerful, impactful one.” Glad to hear the science supports this!