Women's Organizations Editing and Proofreading Services

Organisations working with women experiencing violence write under a constraint most of the sector never faces: the material may be read by the person the service exists to protect a woman from. A leaflet in a handbag, a browsing history, a letter arriving at an address he controls, a website with a name that appears on a shared bill. Every ordinary communication decision — how the organisation is named, what a text message says, where a phone number appears — is also a safety decision, and the ones made without thinking are the ones that cause harm.

We edit what women's organisations, refuges and specialist services produce — service information and access material, safety planning documentation, referral and self-referral routes, helpline and web chat content, refuge and accommodation information, court and legal process explanations, immigration and no recourse to public funds information, children's service material, perpetrator-facing and partner agency communications, staff and volunteer training and handbooks, safeguarding and risk assessment documentation, funding applications and commissioner reporting, campaign and policy material, and community outreach material in the languages the service works in. Our editors are used to material where wording carries physical risk.

Writing so that discovery does not cause harm is the discipline that shapes everything else. We work on public material so the organisation's name and the page title do not disclose what the service is where that is a risk; so any web page carries a genuinely functional exit and an explanation of browsing history that is accurate rather than reassuring; so leaflets are designed to be defensible if found — information that could plausibly be about something else, with the specific detail behind a step a woman takes deliberately; so no communication route is offered without saying who might see it, since a text message reaches a phone somebody else may hold; and so anything sent by post is described accurately, including what the envelope looks like. We also write the sentence services often omit: what the organisation will do if he contacts them, and what it will not disclose. Women ask that before they ask anything else, and answering it in print reaches the ones who never make the call.

Everything you send is treated in strict confidence, including service locations, casework and material about identifiable people. We are editors rather than specialist practitioners, legal or immigration advisers, and we offer no view on risk assessment, safety planning or any case. What we can do is make the writing clear and check it against the possibility of it being found.