Report proofreading

I trust that you and your team are the experts when it comes to your corporate and research content. You know what the report needs to say and why it’s been crafted that way.

You don’t want someone charging in and changing the text. That’s not proofreading. So I don’t edit, tweak or ‘improve’ your writing. What do I do, then?

I create consistency across complex documents.

I transform those hefty documents built by a team that need to read like they weren’t.

Reports, white papers and research reviews tend to pass through multiple authors, reviewers, stakeholders and rounds of revision before publication. My role is to create coherence across the finished document so it reads like one person wrote it.

That means spotting inconsistencies, terminology variations, structural anomalies, referencing issues and accidental distractions that can undermine reader trust. I also discern whether it’s a deliberate stylistic choice and when not to suggest a change.

I don’t fiddle or fix – I focus.

Clear, clean corporate report and research content is as much about your readers as it is about your reputation.

When there’s a significant financial outcome or vital call to action, it’s important your readers are engaged to the end.

I follow my strategic 5-stage BEAM process to systematically remove the natural build-up of oversights and distractions that come from multiple contributors.

Typos? It’s rarely typos. Your writers are hot on that stuff.

The thing I find most often is inconsistency.

One contributor writes ‘Fig. 1’ but another uses ‘Figure 1’. A product name changes partway through the document then back again. An acronym is defined twice (and differently). A link points to an internal page your readers can’t access.

Individually, these issues seem small.

But together? Across hundreds of pages? That’s a few hundred issues too, which create friction for your reader and uncertainty around your credibility.

Written content that’s been transferred into the artwork creates new issues too. Paragraphs are copied twice, placeholder text remains mid-page, different page layout options create page numbering issues and watermarks are found floating on images.

Errors are expected – it’s why I’m here. As your proofreader, I communicate all queries, notes and suggestions with kindness. It’s important to me that I annotate your content in a way that I’d be happy to receive for my own writing.

And I know the work doesn’t end once I’ve returned your proofed content.

The average number of annotations made across the reports and research I proofread in 2025 was 79 per 1,000 words. There could be a few hundred in your content – that’s the norm! Your team needs to work through those amends to decide how to move forwards with the content and the designers are tasked with making all those updates. So I also consider the impact of the changes on you and your design team as I mark up your work.