What makes a successful grant application?

Lots of things of course, starting with an excellent idea. However, are particular words important? In his article for The Conversation (27 February 2015), Owen Churches (Postdoctoral Fellow in Psychology at Flinders University) counts and charts the occurrences of words in the summaries of successful Australian Research Council Discovery Project applications. ‘New’ and ‘novel’ are very frequent (but oddly, not ‘innovative’), as are ‘understanding’, ‘Australia’ and ‘develop’. He also describes changes in word use over time. Well worth a look.