Speechwriting Services Editing and Proofreading Services

A speechwriter's work succeeds when nobody can tell it was written. The audience must believe they are hearing the speaker think, and the speaker must be able to deliver it without the sensation of reciting someone else's sentences — which is what produces the flat, careful delivery that kills a good speech. Everything hinges on capturing how this particular person actually talks, and that is a research problem before it is a writing one.

We edit what speechwriters, communications teams and speakers produce — keynote and conference speeches, executive and leadership addresses, all-hands and town hall remarks, award acceptance and tribute speeches, eulogies and memorial addresses, wedding and personal occasion speeches, political and campaign speeches, parliamentary and committee statements, panel and Q&A preparation, video scripts for a speaker to deliver, toasts and short remarks, speaker briefing and background documents, and the delivery script itself with its marking and formatting. Our editors work in the speaker's idiom rather than in a house style.

Capturing the speaker's voice is the discipline, and it is done by listening rather than by asking. A speaker asked how they want to sound will describe an aspiration; recordings of them talking unguardedly reveal what they actually do — the sentence length, whether they use lists of three or of two, whether they swear, whether they can carry a joke, the words they reach for and the register they never use. We build speeches from that evidence, so the draft contains constructions the speaker already makes, and we cut anything they would not say however good it is, because a line the speaker stumbles over is worse than a plainer line they own. We also mark the delivery script practically — sense-unit line breaks rather than paragraphs, the pauses, the words to land, the moment to look up — since most speeches are damaged in delivery rather than in writing. And we test the draft by having the speaker read it aloud early, because the sentence that reads well and cannot be said is discovered on the night otherwise.

Everything you send is treated in strict confidence, including drafts, personal material and speeches before delivery. Ghostwriting arrangements are confidential by their nature and we do not disclose the work we do. We are editors and writers rather than advisers on policy, legal or reputational questions, and the words remain the speaker's own.