Proofreading

Giving the words a final polish

If you wish me to proofread your writing, I will be:

  • checking spelling, grammar, and punctuation
  • checking consistent use of already correctly-spelt words (such as —ise or —ize endings, and —t or —ed endings; such as southeast or south-east or south east)
  • checking capital letters are used consistently and correctly
  • checking numbers are presented consistently
  • checking fonts are used consistently
  • checking page numbers
  • checking quotes are referenced
  • checking illustrations and figures are in the right place, and labelled correctly
  • checking your organisation's house style has been applied correctly, if it has one

Prices

Rates run from 1 March to 28 (or 29) February. For 2023/24 the rate for corporate clients is £34.20/hour; for private individuals, £29.40/hour. I do not charge VAT.

The amount of work needed on different texts will, of course, vary. You will receive a bespoke service; the examples below are just that: examples. That said, as a general rule the longer the text, the less the cost per word.

To give you an idea of the cost of proofreading, here are examples of real past proofreading jobs for corporate clients, costed per word at 2023/24 rates:

  • a report of about 14,000 words for a well established corporate client – 1.8p
  • a corporate PowerPoint presentation of about 2,000 words – 5.6p
  • a 3,500-word bilingual annual report that, as well as proofreading the English version, had to be compared for accuracy against the Welsh version – 12.9p.

And here are some examples of real proofreading jobs for private individuals at 2023/24 rates:

  • a large, quite technical non-fiction text of about 180,000 words for a self-publisher – 1.1p
  • self-publishing novelists’ jobs tend to work out at around 0.8p to 1.1p.

The word counts in these examples have been rounded.

Projects using this service

Effects Analysis IFRS 17 Insurance Contracts for the IFRS® Foundation

This 140-page IFRS® Foundation report is one of dozens of financial reporting documents that I have proofread or copy-edited for this client

Foundation documents must be unambiguous, as they are explaining complex concepts to an international readership. They must also comply with its style guide. The Foundation demands meticulous proofreading of its texts, which are often written by non-native English authors.

The IFRS® Foundation develops and produces a single set of high-quality, global accounting standards that are used in over a hundred jurisdictions to describe companies' financial performance.

What my clients say

Our clients, the technical team, were impressed with your work on this document.

Senior Editor

An Atheists’ Bible, a novel

I proofread this novel, which is about Diderot’s Encyclopédie and book smuggling in 18th century France

In keeping with novel’s location and historical setting, the text contains many foreign words. One of the main proofreading challenges was to make sure these were consistently shown in italics. My ability to think bilingually stood me in good stead for this task.

This is Kurtis Sunday’s third novel to be published by Cambria Books.

What my clients say

You did an amazingly thorough job – thanks a million, much appreciated.

author