A Dozen Authors, Zero Consistency

A major philanthropic advisory organization had a guidebook that was a flagship publication: a resource that would represent their expertise to donors, foundations, and nonprofit partners. Chapters had been contributed by a dozen authors, each with their own approach to citations, sourcing, and formatting. The document referenced dozens of the organization’s own guides as well as external sources.

The client needed someone who could verify every external reference, ensure all internal publications were properly linked and credited, standardize the additional resources sections, and make all corrections directly in the live InDesign file—in under 24 hours, with a graphic designer waiting to insert final images.

After a rapid back-and-forth to clarify scope, I proceeded with the work: located every referenced guide and external source, confirming accuracy and validity of URLs; ensured all footnotes were in accordance with the Chicago Manual of Style; worked in the production file itself, inserting footnotes, making styles consistent, and fixing formatting issues; and merged a scattered Additional Resources section into one alphabetized, properly formatted reference list.

During the citation pass, I documented 25+ additional issues—including a case study that needed to be removed due to a significant factual inaccuracy—then completed a full proofread of the document, identifying misspellings, orphaned lines, and incorrect page references.

Less than 24 hours after the project began, I delivered the corrected and proofread InDesign file for the graphic designer to proceed on schedule. The client offered an unsolicited 50 percent bonus and requested a follow-up engagement for full proofreading. Their words: “THANK YOU! You are giving me so much relief!”