By: Hannah Jurkiewicz
I recently took EH 315: Intro to Professional Writing and I found the skills required to write professionally translate outside of writing careers. Many scholarship and fellowship applications have word or character limits making it important to choose your words wisely.
Introductory professional writing courses provide students with the skills to write effective and clear documents, ensuring their readers will understand their purpose.
When applying for competitive scholarships, fellowships and grants these skills will be beneficial and may help to set your application apart.
The Seven Cs of Professional Writing will help you complete your scholarship application with ease.
What are the Seven Cs?
- Clear
- Coherent
- Complete
- Concise
- Courteous
- Concrete
- Correct
When it comes to applications with word limits, it is important to emulate these seven characteristics.
Oftentimes, applications ask for personal essays and responses to questions to gain an understanding of you and your goals. You want to convey yourself in the most complete and clear way possible so your audience can see how you stand out and are the best recipient for the scholarship.
Begin by understanding the prompt for the application and start writing what comes to mind. Having an understanding of what you are being asked to write will help you provide the most correct response.
It might be helpful to begin by writing your narrative response with all the information you want to say. Then, through editing, you pick out what is most important to the story for the application. Editing down allows you to be more concise and concrete about what you want the reader to gain.
Continue to reflect on the prompt and narrow down the details you find most pertinent to your response. The editing process will also aid in creating a coherent and complete narrative for your audience.
"Through understanding and editing your responses multiple times, you will have a product you feel conveys you as best as possible."
Scholarships are highly competitive and require time and effort to apply to. Scholarship applications challenge candidates to be concise through limitations. These applications also require the applicant to have a concrete understanding of themselves and the ability to convey that well through writing.
The basis for professional writing and communication stems from the 7Cs, but these characteristics of communication will be helpful outside of the job market as you utilize them in your personal narratives and responses for scholarships.
