Pulp and Paper Editing and Proofreading Services

A printer is offered a substitute grade at the same grammage and a better price. Same weight, same brightness, similar opacity. It runs, and the job is a disaster — the sheet is bulkier, so the book is eight millimetres thicker than the case; it takes ink differently, so the solids are patchy; and it has a different grain direction on the pallet, so it curls in the folder. Every specification figure matched.

We edit what paper mills, merchants and converters produce — paper and board specifications and their test basis, substitution and alternative grade documentation, technical datasheets and property tables, printability and runnability guidance, grain direction and reel specification documentation, moisture, storage and conditioning guidance, certification and chain of custody documentation, complaint and investigation responses, mill and merchant technical support content, and grade development and trial documentation. Our editors work on the substitution nobody wants to discover on press.

Grade specification and substitution guidance is where paper causes expensive surprises, and the failure is describing a grade by the properties that are easy to measure rather than the ones that decide whether it runs. Grammage and brightness match easily; bulk, formation, surface and grain do the damage. We work through these so any substitution is presented as a comparison across the properties that affect the job rather than the ones on the front of the datasheet — bulk and caliper because they decide the spine and the case, opacity because it decides show-through, surface and sizing because they decide ink holdout and set-off, and grain direction because it decides folding and curl; so the test method is named for each property, since bulk measured in a stack and on a single sheet are different figures; so the moisture content and the conditioning requirement is stated, given that paper straight from a cold warehouse into a warm pressroom is the cause of a large share of runnability complaints; so anything that changes on press is described in the printer's terms — how it takes solids, whether it needs more or less ink, how it behaves in the folder; so the reel or sheet specification includes the grain direction unambiguously, because this is the single most consequential thing to get wrong; and so the substitution says what it will not match. Documents written this way get grades accepted rather than returned.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including specifications, trial data and customer information. We are editors rather than paper technologists or printers, and we offer no view on grades, properties or suitability. What we can do is compare the properties that decide whether the job runs.