Editing for business

Are you a publishing, creative, or marketing manager or industry professional

• Receiving work from other departments that vary by writing skills, but you have to make everything that goes out the door look consistent?
• Inundated with documents written by multiple people, departments, or contractors and must turn them into streamlined products with uniform voice and formatting?
• Responsible for making sure all products are aligned to company voice and brand?
• Facing last-minute work and you have no time or staff to complete the project?
• Looking for a capable editor who can be available to solve your headaches?
• Looking for a collaborator who is professional, thorough, and offers a high level of attention?

If you answered yes to even one question, then you need an editor!

My experience includes working with nonprofit and for-profit organizations, ranging from a small animal shelter’s fund-raising outreach, to an international company producing reports for various government agencies, to a Fortune 500 company producing a glossy major marketing campaign, to five school catalogs of every class offered by a major university, to hundreds of blogs on personal finance, to quarter-end reports for an investment firm.

What do you produce that could use a keen eye and help make you and your company look organized and polished? The list could include:

• Quarterly and annual reports
• Proposals and reports
• Marketing and sales materials
• Blogs
• Financial prospectuses, commentaries, and brochures
• College catalogs
• Requests for proposals (RFPs)
• Update statements
• Print or e-newsletters
• And much more

My goal will always be to make sure that your products are crisp, clear, cohesive, consistent, professional, and aligned with your brand. Another goal? To keep projects moving off your desk.

The following is a list of editing I have performed for business clients. Obviously, not everything is needed for all projects, but this list offers ideas on what I can do to help your words shine. After all, my own branding is “working with your bright ideas”!

For BUSINESS editing, I offer:

• Close communication with the manager or team leader
• Adding uniformity to documents (brochures, reports, etc.) written by multiple people
• Making sure that ongoing projects (blogs, articles, etc.) retain company style and voice
• Adding clarity and precision to wording
• Verifying names, position titles, programs/departments, and abbreviations are spelled consistently
• Following project-specific guidelines
• Creating a house style guide, if one does not exist
• Noting layout or pagination issues in copy ready to go to the printer
• Querying if copyrighted items have permissions approval
• Checking functionality of URLs