Fulfilling government and corporate editing needs

When you need to encourage good public policy or report critical issues to your stakeholders, Shorewalker DMS can raise your impact and visibility. We work with your team to sharpen your message without losing accuracy or sensitivity.

Editing government and corporate reports is a specialist task. These documents require very different skills and experience to those required for editing books or academic work. And they often require far deeper expertise than just the ability to correct grammar and spelling, apply style rules and proofread the finished work.

If you want your report to persuade people, you need it to speak clearly. And you need it to speak directly to the needs of its audiences. Careful, technical passages alone will not get the job done. You need an editor who can edit for impact and for plain language, without putting the document at risk. 

Editing for impact

Your report must affect decision-makers. You need to make a persuasive case.

So you need an editor who understands how reports work in practice – how government bodies and key stakeholder groups will react to particular recommendations, ideas and phrasings. This requires an editor who has worked extensively with governments, corporate groups and the media.

Our principal, David Walker, understands what it takes to move a public debate. He has worked with key government departments, headed advocacy for the Business Council of Australia, and has worked with private sector bodies making arguments to Australia's federal Treasury and to major government inquiries. He spent several years in the federal and Victorian parliamentary press galleries, and was for more than a decade a columnist for The Age newspaper. He was also one of the first Australian journalists to regularly present to camera for dedicated online video.

Plain language

Even within governments, most readers not give your report a second look unless you can prove quickly that you have important and useful points to make. An increasingly time-pressed media poses similar problems. So your report needs to present information in a way that lets someone understand it the first time they read or hear it. You need clear, plain and vivid language that will survive and thrive when translated into policy memos, commentators' tweets and everything in between.

But an editor can usually simplify language only when he understands what is being said, and why. When editing a substantial report, your editor may very well need to be able to simplify language from finance, statistics and physical or social science fields. Done without expertise, editing of expert opinions can create controversy. You need editors who will favour plain language without removing the nuances your report needs to maintain.

When your editor is working with you to develop and refine top-level elements such as executive summaries and key messages, these skills become even more important.

The editing you need

Editing is not just one service. Even persuasive editing covers a range of possible services – from a simple check to a complete reworking or rewriting.

Many of our clients fell that they need their reports to have a more powerful and persuasive impact. In these cases, they ask us to do a heavy edit (sometimes called a "substantive edit") or a complete rewrite of parts of their documents. We typically do this work in close consultation with the original authors and the client's project managers.

Safe hands

Reports often come under heavy scrutiny from government decision-makers, lobby groups, the political and business media, and the general public, including through social media. Editors need to understand this scrutiny, and edit to minimise risks and maximise opportunities:

• Political opportunity and risk awareness: If the report is in line with a relevant government's policies and interests, an editor should understand the political opportunities and should be able to edit the document so as to highlight them. The opposite should apply where a report is as odds with those policies and interests. 
• Community sensitivity: The report should avoid needlessly inflaming the sensitivities of key community groups, including those that are currently in the media spotlight or will be consulted over the report.
• Policy process awareness: A report is often more likely to gain favour if its findings can be aligned with the views of key administrative gatekeepers such as Treasury. A skilled editor will take this into account in the editing process.
• Critical audience awareness: Writing for an audience of departmental officials, investors or domain experts requires different techniques than does writing for a consumer audience. These expert audiences see many claims in a typical day. They will evaluate yours with a deeply critical eye. Your claims will need to stack up as valid, supportable and highly informed, with credible case studies.
• Source awareness: Findings are more likely to be adopted if the report has well-chosen sources and stresses its findings are supported by credible experts and groups. Again, a skilled editor will work to this.

Shorewalker DMS editors' backgrounds let them act as safe pairs of hands – to make sure your report passes these tests.