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Give your writing project a strong start by learning the tricks of the trade. Improving your writing skills saves you time, effort and stress not just on your next writing project, but for life. Get it Write! will:

• review with you what a major writing project involves
• help you visualise the writing process from start to finish so you can keep your writing on track
• discuss with you how to best involve colleagues
• show you techniques to locate, collect and organise the information you need for your document, quickly and efficiently
• help you understand what causes writer's block and how to make a writing job enjoyable and less stressful.

You can maximise the impact of your writing if you first define your readers and what you want them to know and be able to do. Then you can be confident your writing will be effective. Get it Write! will help you:

• clarify what you want your document to achieve
• clarify your readership and the information it needs
• decide the tone of the document
• envisage the 'look and feel' of the final product.

A preliminary contents structure and a planned approach to changing it as you write make for quicker, easier and more enjoyable writing and a well-organised document. Developing a preliminary contents structure at the planning stage— before you research, consult or write—keeps you focused on your purpose, which is to produce a document. It also makes research and consultation more efficient and writing quicker, easier and more enjoyable. Get it Write! will:

• explain the principles and techniques of developing and iterating a contents structure
• help identify any requirements (such as legislative requirements or terms of reference) for the structure
• brainstorm content ideas with you
• identify and assess alternatives for a contents structure
• help you organise your content ideas in line with the structure
• advise you how best to iterate the contents structure as you write.

Developing a big document is easier and less stressful if authors have day-to-day support as writing challenges arise and independent and experienced supervision of the writing process. An experienced editor can help you build writing skills throughout your project and provide feedback and encouragement to keep you focused and moving ahead. Get it Write! will:

• help you iterate the contents structure as you write
• help you get the most from Microsoft Word
• keep you focused, on schedule and confident
• keep your writing clear, easy to read and easy to understand
• provide the regular professional support and feedback you might not get in-house
• review sections of your draft and give practical advice about how to improve it
• monitor your progress so you can complete drafts on time and within budget.

Good writing needs a solid factual basis. We plan and conduct research for publications, campaigns, conference presentations, speeches, training resources and all other types of document.

Our research process prevents vague, open-ended inquiry by developing, in the planning stage, a draft contents structure for the final report then focusing the research on it. As we conduct the research, the structure and the research inquiries evolve to keep activity focused on the questions you want answered. This approach means research questions integrate with the final reporting so we collect the minimum of irrelevant and repetitious information. This maximises research efficiency by minimising the amount of information you collect but do not report, resulting in lower costs, shorter timelines, better productivity and more return on your research dollar.

Our experience includes literature reviews, environment scans, summarising public consultations and submission processes, focus groups and individual in-depth interviews, and print and online surveys and questionnaires.

Partnering with an experienced writer can make writing quicker, cheaper and less stressful. It can also improve quality. Many professionals outsource the job of writing so they can focus on what they do best: provide expertise and direction. Get it Write! will:

• plan your document's structure, content and images to best convey your messages
• research, abstract, organise and synthesise information
• write quality text, for all audiences, in all styles and for all types of documents
• craft messages that maximise the power, impact and effectiveness of your ideas
• rewrite drafts from different authors in a uniform style.

We write speeches, articles, manuals, annual reports, training resources, learning guides, websites, promotional material, expressions of interest and requests for tender—anything that needs quality writing. We write for all audiences, in all styles and for all types of publications.

There’s no need to be nervous about the changes we might make to your document. Get it Write! will edit a sample of your document first so you can see the types of changes we propose to make. Our clients are invariably pleasantly surprised by the improvement!

Please note: An instant quote only includes this element if you ask for it in the ‘Tell us any particular requirements you have for the editing’ section of the ‘Submit your document’ page. Also, we will extend the guaranteed delivery time by the amount of time you need to respond to our edited sample.

Ideally, every paragraph in a document should be concise and focused on a single idea. The first sentence should state the idea and following sentences should explain or develop the first sentence. Each sentence should contain just one idea and there should be no obvious repetition, unless there is a purpose for it. Get it Write! will structure paragraphs and sentences, within the constraints of the material you provide us with.

Please note: an instant quote only includes minor restructuring.

In a well-structured document, the things you want to communicate to readers are easy to identify. The structure of your document presents the information in a logical order, with each heading reflecting the content of the paragraphs beneath it. Get it Write! will ensure:

• every block of text except introductory statements has a heading, in Word style
• headings are consistently spaced
• each heading is a subset of the heading above it
• the expression of headings and the structure of chapters and sections are consistent.

When we restructure documents, we review the logical flow of arguments and if necessary rearrange the text to strengthen your message. This often identifies gaps in the flow and strength of your arguments or in the supporting material. Get it Write! will:

• offer suggestions to fill gaps in the flow of arguments
• write simple text to fill these gaps, if the linking idea is clear from the surrounding material or if we can deduce it from basic internet research or common knowledge.

Printed publications (such as books and reports) usually have preliminary and end matter. Preliminary matter is the information at the front of the publication, before the main text begins, that provides the publication's compliance and identification details and introduces and summarises the text. End matter includes the appendices, glossary, reference list, endnotes, bibliography and index. Get it Write! will:

• review the preliminary and end matter you provide and identify any deficiencies
• identify any other preliminary and end matter the publication needs
• with major publications, either create or organise the required preliminary and end matter.

As document restructuring becomes more extensive, two-way communication is increasingly important to share ideas about how the document can be the best it can be. Get it Write! will:

• notate the edited document with comments, suggestions and questions for the author
• conduct an editorial conference with the author if necessary to discuss our comments, suggestions and questions
• incorporate the author's feedback in the edited document.

There's an art to writing a summary or case study that addresses the key points in your document, while telling its own story. Get it Write! will:

• extract and structure the key points in your document to write a comprehensive, stand-alone summary
• use your document to produce a case study that readers will find interesting and relevant, so others benefit from what you have learned.

Please note: an instant quote does not include this element.

Conciseness and clarity get your message across and let your true voice be heard. Convoluted and unclear writing and tangled language confuse readers and give them a reason to look elsewhere for information, because they don't understand what you're saying. Get it Write! will rewrite sentences where necessary to:

• minimise verbosity by cutting superfluous words, bloated phrases and inappropriate repetition
• simplify and clarify sentences by rewriting them to be clear, short, to the point and positive; by replacing complex, abstract, weak and vogue words; by cutting inappropriate jargon; by explaining technical concepts; and by removing ambiguity
• remove different writing styles so your document reads like it was written by one author
• prefer active voice to passive voice
• avoid nominalisation (turning verbs into nouns).

Please note: An instant quote for Readable editing only includes minor rewriting. An instant quote for Structured editing includes substantial rewriting.

Oh dear, the date is wrong, the numbers don’t add up or there’s a contradiction with something a few sentences back. Fresh eyes can spot basic mistakes that even the most astute writers can’t see in their work. Basic mistakes are easy to make and often what the reader notices first. Get it Write! will point out or correct:

• contradictions, commonsense mistakes and simple arithmetical errors
• other misleading or seemingly incorrect information.

You want readers to take your writing seriously: you don’t want your great ideas overpowered by simple mistakes that erode their confidence and trust. Get it Write! will:

• fix basic grammar mistakes to ensure good sentence structure; subject-verb, verb-tense and pronoun agreement; no split infinitives or dangling modifiers; and parallel structure in sentences
• correct mistakes with apostrophes, commas, colons, semicolons and other punctuation marks
• check and correct more than 200 commonly misused words (such as ‘your / you’re’, ‘it’s / its’, ‘good / well’, ‘affect / effect’ and ‘there / their’)
• spellcheck your document using Kelvin Eldridge’s preferred Australian English spelling
• check a sample of calculations for simple numerical mistakes (such as with addition, multiplication and percentages)
• check that numbers below 10 are spelled out (depending on the document and type of text) and that measures, terms (such as ‘per cent’ and ‘%’), year spans and dates are presented consistently and correctly.

Capitals. Hyphens. Italics. Em dashes. Numbers. Your organisation possibly has rules about these and many other aspects of style. Paying attention to style details is both a matter of compliance and of quality assurance: a poorly styled document will have noticeable inconsistencies and oddities and to the observant reader will look sloppy.
Get it Write! will:

• ensure your document complies with your organisation's style guidelines
• if your organisation doesn’t have style guidelines, make the style of your document consistent with our style rules, which are based on Australian Government Publishing Service Style manual for authors, editors and printers, the nationally recognised guidelines for publication style
• on larger publications, establish style rules, put text in our working template and clean up heading and text styles, if appropriate.

Authors use tables, figures and images to help readers understand their messages and data, so we make sure they do just that. Get it Write! will:

• tidy up, standardise and correctly format the introductory text, headings, cells, sources and notes of figures and tables
• resize and compress images that can make your file much bigger than it needs to be
• check the formatting of images to ensure they stay where they should be on the page and don’t move around
• prepare text in text boxes so a graphic artist can manipulate them, if appropriate.

References: We often see lists of references with idiosyncratic structures that do not comply with the author-date (Harvard) referencing system or another of the main referencing systems — Vancouver, Chicago, APA or Oxford. Get it Write! will:

• with your agreement, make your references consistent with the author-date (Harvard) system or another of the main referencing systems
• check references as required against internet sources for incorrect and incomplete details
• check for inconsistent punctuation and broken hyperlinks in references.

Cross-references: Many documents we edit have cross-references to related information elsewhere in the same document or available on the internet. Get it Write! will hyperlink these cross-references so onscreen readers can quickly and easily access them, and we will check existing references.

Glossaries: Authors often struggle with glossaries: what to put in them and what to leave out. Get it Write! will define rules for your glossary and create it, or edit an existing glossary to confirm all terms are included in the document and are clearly explained.

Acronyms: It's important to observe conventions about how and when to use acronyms and other shortened forms. Get it Write! will

• apply our rules for acronyms
• check the correct use of other shortened forms: abbreviations, contractions, initialisms and symbols.

Please note: an instant quote does not include these services.

It’s easy for small mistakes to creep into your document as it weaves its way through the approval process and people fiddle with it. So, it's important to have it rechecked before it’s finalised. Get it Write! will:

• do manual and computer checks for the most-common last-minute grammar, spelling and formatting mistakes
• carefully read the document on paper to identify and fix last-minute mistakes.

You’ve spent a lot of time and resources developing your document and you want it to look good. If your document is not heading to a graphic artist, poor formatting and layout give readers a reason to skip bits and not read it closely. Get it Write! will:

• update the table of contents and any other automatically generated tables
• check that elements are correctly positioned on the page
• check paragraph and page breaks.

Things can, and do, go wrong in the graphic art stage of the publishing process. Get it Write! will check the final page proofs as a support to any process you have to authorise them for printing or electronic publication. This includes checking:

• late text changes or additions (such as captions)
• for mistakes or misinterpretations by the graphic artist
• issues we know from experience can occur at the graphic art stage.

Please note: This service does not transfer responsibility in full or part to Get it Write! for the authorisation of page proofs before printing.