Transit Authorities Editing and Proofreading Services

Four hundred people are standing on a platform at ten past eight. The announcement tells them there is a signal failure at the junction and apologises for the inconvenience caused. Nobody on that platform wants to know about the signal. They want to know whether to wait, walk, take the bus outside, or telephone work and say they will be an hour. The announcement contains none of that, so four hundred people look at their phones instead.

We edit what transit authorities and operators produce — service disruption announcements and their templates, timetable change and consultation material, wayfinding and signage text, accessibility information and journey planning guidance, fares and ticketing explanations, service standards and passenger charters, and the messages that go out on a morning when nothing is running. Our editors work on words read by people who are already late.

The disruption message is the moment a transit authority is judged, and its failure is an explanation offered in place of an instruction. Passengers do not need a cause; they need a decision. We work through these so the message opens with what to do rather than with what has happened, since the first six words are all that most people read; so an alternative is named specifically — the route number, the stop, whether the ticket is accepted — because "please seek alternative routes" tells a stranger in an unfamiliar city nothing; so a time is given even when it is uncertain, given that "we will update at 08:40" is usable and "we apologise for the delay" is not; so the scale is stated plainly, as somebody facing a two-hour disruption should be told that rather than kept in ten-minute increments; so accessibility is addressed in the main message rather than appended, because a step-free route failing is a different journey and not a slower one; so the apology comes after the instruction, since it occupies the space where the information should be; and so the same wording works when read aloud on a platform, printed on a poster and pushed to a phone. Messages written this way move people.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including operational information, draft communications and consultation material. We are editors rather than transport planners or operators, and we offer no view on service decisions, timetabling or policy. What we can do is put the instruction first.