• Résumés
• Business Documents
• Illiterate Personal Correspondence
• Private Texts and Papers
• Speeches
• Advertising Copy
• Marketing Reports
• Essays
• Historical Works
• Short Stories
• Fiction: Short Stories and Novels
• All Nonfiction
• Technical Manuals; User Guides
• Conference Papers
• ESL & Bad Translations into English that Need Rewrites
• Film Scripts & Stage Plays
• Business Scenarios
• Research Papers & Reports
• Presentation Scripts
• Poorly Written Web Site Copy

 

For a price quote, contact the Prose Fixer now.

 

 

An Example of Editing

A Short Sample of a Speech Paragraph Rewritten

 

Opening paragraph as written:

I just want to say right off the top of this that I have got some important messages that are going to be of value to every single person who is sitting patiently in front of me this morning waiting and hoping that, heh-heh, wisdom is going to fall from the clouds on all who are paying attention to me. So let me start by saying this: one in every four people in this auditorium this morning will not be working for us next year.

Opening Paragraph as Edited & Rewritten

I just want to say right off the top of this that I have got some important messages that are going to be of value to every single person who is sitting patiently in front of me this morning waiting and hoping that, heh-heh, wisdom is going to fall from the clouds on all who are paying attention to me. So let me start by saying this:

Look around this room. You see people you know, right? Every fourth person in this room is going to be fired in the next eight weeks.

 

The Rule: Open with a blunt, stark attention-grabber, a clear fact chosen to knock the audience on their complacent asses.

Cut out all the turkey gobble leading up to important statements.

Begin in the middle. It worked for Homer. It worked for Dante. It worked for John Milton. But you are a better writer than those losers, right? Thus you may avoid a dynamic, memorable first sentence? I doubt it. Virgil, the national poet of the ancient Roman Empire, called such an opening, beginning “in medias res.”

Jump right inside the topic.

Start with sharp fact.

Cut out all the soft-pedalling, lead-up, fancy-pants drivel.

 

 

Oh, Come On, No Need to Check a Résumé ! from Working World by Doug McArthur, Globe & Mail newspaper, December 30, 2009   “. . . telephone poll of 100 Canadian senior executives indicated that more than one in five would reject applications with a single typo.” “Résumé goofs uncovered . . . included the following: ‘Dear Sir or Madman,’ ‘I am a pubic relations officer,’ ‘My interests include cooking dogs and interesting people,’ ‘I'm attacking my resume for you to review,’ and ‘I was responsible for dissatisfied customers.’ ” If the mistakes above approximate the low level of slovenly scrawling you turn out, you need help in composing and copy-editing a sound and effective résumé.   Cliché-Ridden Language Destroys Your Résumé January, 2011 Several web places including LinkedIn, the networking site, have conducted thousand-sample surveys of poorly written résumés. Then they asked hiring managers if résumés jammed with stale, lame phrases like “dynamic go-getter,” “results-oriented team player,” and “multitasking entrepreneurial skyrocket” help or hinder the job-seeker. In every case, hiring execs said overused words in résumés prevent managers from hiring people. Clichés ruin your résumé and destroy your chances of getting the job. So do the words in your résumé matter? Big time! Wake-up time! If you can’t write anything but dreary copycat stuff stolen from résumé guides, maybe it’s time to hire a good writer to compose your résumé or merely to edit it to remove the crap and the clichés and couch it in vibrant, original language that will focus on what makes your personal strengths unique and so worth having in a business. The Prose-Fixer writes résumés.   For a price quote, contact the Prose Fixer now.

 

 

How Does The Prose Fixer Operate?

 

1.

You email me a sample of the writing that may need a rewrite or a copy edit. You state the number of words and purpose of the writing you think may need fixing. Then I email you back how much such an edit or fixing will cost.

 

2.

If you need a speech written or a business or personal document written from scratch, ab ovo, then write a short description of what you need and how many words long the document ought to be. Email this explanatory paragraph to me, and I will email you back the amount of the fee I shall charge you.

 

My email address is:

 

wordguy@shaw.ca