Report proofreading

You know your stuff. I know how to approach it.

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, strategic and business-critical documents.

Reports, white papers and research reviews tend to pass through multiple authors, stakeholders, reviewers and rounds of revision before publication. That’s where inconsistencies, terminology variations, structural anomalies and accidental distractions can easily creep in.

My role is to bring coherence to the finished document, so it reads as one clear piece of work and not a collection of contributions.

I know when to correct, when to query and when not to intervene.

The issues that survive internal review

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.

Thorough review, practical handover

Errors are expected – it’s why I’m here. As your proofreader, I communicate queries, notes and suggestions clearly and constructively. I annotate your document in a way that’s practical to work through and considerate of your team’s time.

And I know the work doesn’t end once I’ve returned your proofread document.

Want a realistic sense of the level of review involved?

Across the reports and complex documents I proofread, I made an average of 79 annotations per 1,000 words in 2025.

There could be a few hundred in your document – that’s expected. But your team still needs to review those changes and comments, decide how to move forward and brief any designers making the updates.

So as I mark up your work, I consider the impact of each suggested change on everyone involved in getting the document ready for sign-off.