Compliance with unrealistic proposal preparation instructions and instructions to offerers often prevents preparation of proposals that respond effectively to the solicitation and that are easy to read and evaluate. Typical requirements are examined in the form of questions from those who write proposals about why certain preparation instructions are issued. A simple solution is proposed that should make it easy for those who write instructions and those who write proposals to achieve their common objectives.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>