Editing

Is editing necessary?

All writing needs careful revision. Writers are often under pressure to produce a report, standard letter, contract, newsletter, strategy, policy, proposal, style guide and so on, and can become buried in the details of their message. They may not have time to think carefully about how well they communicate, and the result can be verbose, confusing, or even embarrassing.

Our qualifications

The major part of our work is helping people to use clear, concise language. We train staff in how to write clearly, and we routinely edit and rewrite a wide range of material in preparation for their courses.

This experience, our own writing, six degrees (four English, one Computer Science, and one in Information Management) and Nigel's twenty-three years as an A level English teacher and examiner put us in a strong position to help improve your organisation's documents.

How we edit

There are five main stages:

Getting to know the material, and checking with the writer what its purpose is and who the intended readers are.
We redraft where necessary so the document becomes clear (rather than just plain), crisp, logically structured, reasonable, and free from language errors and unnecessary jargon. Clarity pleases the reader. Achieving clarity and the cooperation of educated readers often requires educated, professional language. We rarely support basic plain English techniques such as very simple words, single-idea sentences, relentless ranks of active verbs and unvarying agent-verb syntax.
We submit the document for comment, talk with the writer and revise as necessary. This is where we need the writer to clarify fine shades of meaning. For example, do we mean "advise", or should we use "inform"? Should we use a semi-colon or create a different effect by starting a new sentence? Are we talking about a method or a methodology?
Once we're happy with the language, we start editing for fine details such as white spacing after punctuation marks, paragraph divisions, page numbering and consistency of terms.
Proofreading. This is the time for fanatical attention to detail. We check and recheck, perhaps three times over a couple of days. With luck, this should be the last time we change the text.

These are the main stages. Between them, there will be emails and phone calls, suggestions and discussion. We work closely with writers and negotiate changes at all times.

Electronic or paper?

We recommend Track Changes in Word, but are happy to make paper corrections for short documents.

Fees

Very competitive. Loosely, £35 per A4 side of about 400 words, but we always give an individual quotation after we have assessed a document.