Proofreading for non-fiction writers
Your message. Your voice. Your words. Your reputation. All of these matter – to you, to your audience and to me.
No matter what you write, you want your readers to trust you. That starts with delivering a message that is clear, error-free and devoid of anything that can cause the reader to doubt your sincerity, attention to detail or professionalism. That’s where a professional proofreader can help.
Hi! I’m Agnès, a friendly freelance proofreader with a background in languages, literature, financial printing and training. A member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), I am CIEP-trained and constantly striving to hone my skills.
I’m French, and I realise that entrusting your English text to a French proofreader may sound counterintuitive. But learning English as a foreign language means I had to learn its rules and spend hours practising them. Of course, I have an accent! But who doesn’t? Yours might even be stronger than mine …
Who do I work with?
I work with anyone who writes non-fiction text, but especially:
Businesses & Agencies
You’ve spent months building a new website, hours labouring over the words for a brochure, or your team has worked tirelessly to write an important report or create user manuals … Yet all it takes to shatter the professional image you’ve worked so hard to project is a couple of spelling mistakes, grammatical errors or typos – and when that happens, you lose clients.
You can avoid this by using a professional proofreader.
Schools
Your website … prospectus … GCSE and A-level booklets … yearly school magazine(s) … As your school’s shopfront they need to give parents and prospective pupils/students confidence that your institution is the right choice for them. That requires consistent formatting and layout, and the absence of typos, grammatical errors and spelling mistakes, which are not only embarrassing but also undermine your credibility as an education provider. A professional proofreader can help with this.
Publishers
I am a CIEP-trained proofreader who can proofread in both English and French, working either in Word using Track Changes or Acrobat Reader using the commenting tools or BSI stamps. With a background in languages, literature, financial printing and training, I have worked on non-fiction books on topics as diverse as AI, gender balance in the workplace, inclusive intelligence, child marriage (checking a translation from English into French) and a personal memoir. I don’t proofread fiction.
How does it work?
Discuss requirements
Submit file /sample
Receive quotation
Pay deposit
Document is proofread
Proofread document is returned
Make final payment
Discuss requirements
Submit file /sample
Receive quotation
Pay deposit
Document is proofread
Proofread document is returned
Make final payment
Why pay for proofreading?
Of course, you can check spelling and grammar at the click of a button, but is that really good enough?
Spellcheck will not catch words that are spelled correctly but used in the wrong place (such as ‘you must now’ instead of ‘you must not’), while grammar checkers lack the ability to take context, tone of voice, audience and the end goal of the text into account. That’s why proofreading still requires a human touch. Besides, a trained proofreader looks for so much more than typos, misspellings, grammatical errors and punctuation issues.
Client feedback
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Why not say hello? I’m sure you’ve got lots of questions about proofreading and I’d be delighted to answer them. My email is agnes@precisionproof.co.uk, or you can use the Contact form if you have a project you’d like to discuss.
So what are you waiting for? Don’t be bashful (even if I am)!
Connect with me on LinkedIn.
A big ’thank you’ to my friend Mary Doggett of ETT Photography for taking and supplying the pictures for this website. You can find out about her and see more of her work on her website.