Parks and Trail Organizations Editing and Proofreading Services

The sign at the trailhead says easy. The trail runs 1.2 miles, mostly level, and it ends with eleven steps, a boardwalk section 28 inches wide, and a gate that has to be pulled open with both hands. A wheelchair user, a parent pushing a stroller, and a hiker with a bad hip all set out on it that morning. All three turn back at a point the sign could have named.

The documents we edit for Parks and Trail Organizations

Trail and route descriptions come to us from parks, trail organizations, and land managers, and difficulty and accessibility information travels with them. Trailhead signage and map text arrive as well, along with management and maintenance plans, volunteer and stewardship documentation, and funding applications and grant reports. The work also covers consultation material for proposed changes and the notices that explain a closure. Our editors work on the description somebody reads the night before a visit.

What the editing involves

The description is what decides whether a visit works, and it fails when a difficulty grade stands in for a set of measurements. The word easy carries the judgment of somebody who did not have to think about it. Measurements need no interpreting: total distance, surface, the narrowest point, the steepest section and how long it runs, the number of steps, the camber, and the gates with how they open. A description reading "1.2 miles, compacted gravel, narrowing to 28 inches at the boardwalk, eleven steps at 0.9 miles" lets a visitor decide without telephoning anyone.

The hardest feature belongs near the top of the description rather than in its last line. Eleven steps decide the trip for a substantial number of visitors, and a level path of 1.2 miles does not change that. The point where somebody would have to turn back deserves naming with the distance to it, because a visitor who knows the first 0.9 miles will work can still have a good afternoon. Surfaces read better in terms of what they do in the wet, since a compacted path and a grass path are the same width in July, and different trails in November.

Facilities are worth locating by distance along the route rather than listing at the end, because a bench at 0.4 miles, a restroom at 0.7 miles, and shelter at the turn decide feasibility more often than gradient does. Whether service animals, mobility scooters, and adaptive cycles are permitted belongs in the description rather than left for somebody to call and ask. Photographs of the awkward features carry more than a paragraph about them. The word accessible works best beside the measurements behind it, since one visitor takes the word to mean step-free, and another takes it to mean parking at the trailhead. We do not rate the trail or decide what any visitor can manage. The organization and its own access advisors set the standards, and our work is to see that every figure in the description matches the one on the survey it came from.

Confidentiality and the limits of our role

Everything you send us is treated in confidence, including management plans, survey data, and organizational documents. We are editors, not access consultants, land managers, or surveyors, and we offer no opinion on accessibility, safety, or land management. What we can do is replace a grade with the measurements a visitor needs.