On campuses across the country, keyboards are tapping out requests for federal funding. Grantseekers new to the game, or who have not enjoyed much success in capturing ever-shrinking federal dollars, can learn from those with more experience.

Last month, Penn Professor of Psychology Raquel E. Gur presented a seminar on "The Art and Science of Obtaining Federal Funding," sponsored by the Penn Medical Center. For those who did not attend the seminar but hope to attract a funding source's attention and bag a grant, Dr. Gur suggests avoiding these common pitfalls:

• a lack of clear focus;

• no stated hypothesis;

• disorganized text (unrelated paragraphs and sections);

• outdated literature reviews;

• inaccurate citations in the text;

• too much ambition;

• no consideration of alternative methods to the proposed study;

• omission of statistics and plans for data analysis;

• insufficient discussion of limitations;

• small type font or other gimmicks that make reading the text miserable;

• failure to run the application by a pair of external eyes before sending it to the granting reviewer.

Dr. Gur knows her way through the grantsmanship maze. She has written about 25 federal grant proposals. "Usually I get them," she reports, "so I don't have to write too many."