Swim Clubs and Aquatics Editing and Proofreading Services

A nine-year-old swims her first gala. Her mother has a sheet with a warm-up time, a session start and a list of events. What she does not have is when her daughter actually swims, where to sit, what happens if she misses the call, whether they can leave between events, or what to do about the six-hour gap in the middle of the day. They leave at lunchtime, and the child does not swim her best event.

We edit what swim clubs and aquatic organisations produce — meet and gala information for families, squad and session information, time standards and qualification communications, membership and fee documents, coach and volunteer briefings, pool safety and supervision policies, learn-to-swim programme information, and the communications that manage a club of parents and children. Our editors work on documents read by families who have never done this before.

The meet information sheet is where a swimming club either keeps a family or exhausts it, and its failure is a timetable written for people who already know how a gala works. Almost nothing that happens at a swimming meet is self-explanatory. We work through these so the day is described as the family will experience it — arrival, warm-up, the long wait, roughly when their child swims, and the earliest they can reasonably go home; so the estimated time of each event is given with a warning about how much it can drift, since a parent planning around a 2pm event needs to know whether that means 1:40 or 3:20; so the call room process is explained with who takes the child, when, and what happens if they miss it, given that this is the single most stressful moment for a first-time family; so the seating and spectator arrangement is described, including whether parents can be with their child and where they cannot; so the gap in the day is addressed honestly with what other families do about food, whether leaving the building is permitted and what is nearby; so the child's own preparation is covered — what to bring, how many towels, and the fact that they will be cold and bored in roughly equal measure; so the result and time information is explained, including what a disqualification means and how it will be communicated; and so a named person is identified who is not a coach and whose job is answering exactly these questions. Information written this way keeps families for years.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including meet documents, member information and club material. We are editors rather than coaches, officials or safety advisers, and we offer no view on competition, technique or safety. What we can do is describe the day as a family will experience it.