What Should You Provide?
The more information you can provide us, the better your finished product will be. For proofreading, editing, and critiquing, we will need a rough draft in either electronic or hard copy. If you want us to write the document for you, you will need to provide us with notes, data, and a general outline.
You should also provide information about the audience and purpose of your document, including answers to the following kinds of questions:
- What is the primary purpose of this particular document? Are you trying to sell a product or idea? Are you trying to teach or persuade your readers?
- Who is your primary intended audience? How much do they know about your subject?
- What do you want your primary audience to do, think, know, or believe as a result of reading your document?
- What secondary audiences or purposes should we consider?
For example, if you were creating a safety manual for your factory, the primary audience would be your workers, and the primary purpose of the manual would be to keep your workers safe. A very important secondary audience might be state regulators, and some secondary purposes might be to avoid lawsuits, to demonstrate compliance with 29 CFR 1910, and to avoid fines or legal penalties.
You also will need to provide information about any formatting and style requirements you may have, including answers to the following kinds of questions:
- What style manual are you required to follow? At DocuWrite, we have access to many of the common American style manuals (MLA, GPO, Chicago, etc.), but if your firm has its own style manual, you will need to provide us with a copy.
- Does your company have a special template that is required for this kind of document? If so, you will need to either provide us with an electronic copy (preferred) or give us a hard copy we can duplicate. Duplicating your template will take additional time and will increase the cost.
- What kinds of media or software packages do you want used for the final copy?
- How and where do you intend your document to be published?