Hardware Stores Editing and Proofreading Services

Somebody comes in with a photograph on their phone and asks what they need. The person behind the counter knows the answer, gives it, and the customer goes home, does the job, and it fails — because the advice was right for the wall in the photograph and the wall turned out to be something else. Good hardware shops live on that advice. They also have to be careful about how it is given.

We edit what hardware stores and builders' merchants produce — advice and recommendation guidance for counter staff, product selection information for customers, fixings, adhesive and treatment application guidance, tool hire terms and handover documentation, returns, exchange and special order policies, trade account and credit documentation, delivery and collection information, safety and product warning content, quantity calculation guidance and its assumptions, and website and shelf-edge product information. Our editors work on the advice given across a counter.

Counter advice is the reason people use a hardware shop rather than an internet search, and the writing task is to keep it useful while keeping it honest about its limits. Staff cannot see the wall, the joist, the pipe or the soil. We write guidance so the advice is framed around the question that determines the answer — what the substrate is, what the load is, whether it is inside or out — since a member of staff who asks two questions gives better advice than one who answers the question asked; so the recommendation is given with what it assumes, because "these will hold a mirror on plasterboard" is right until the wall is lath and plaster and the customer never mentioned the house was Victorian; so the failure mode is named where it matters, given that a customer who knows what a pulled-out fixing looks like will check before hanging the shelf their child sleeps under; so the honest "we cannot tell from here" is available and used, with what the customer can check and come back with — drill a test hole, take a photograph of the back of the unit, bring the old part in; so quantity calculations state their assumptions, coverage rates and waste allowance, as this is where customers most often return with too little or too much; so anything with a safety consequence is separated from anything cosmetic; and so the returns position on special orders, cut materials and opened products is stated at the point of sale. Guidance written this way keeps the advice and the goodwill.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including product information, policies and trade documentation. We are editors rather than trades or product specialists, and we offer no view on products, fixings or their suitability. What we can do is keep counter advice useful and honest about what it cannot see.