The PerfectIt Blog

Here you will find tips and tricks for more efficient editing techniques and improved content. Explore a wealth of ideas, practical advice, and industry best practices that will help you save time while improving the quality of your written documents.

Styles PerfectIt Styles PerfectIt

Six Things to Check in European Union Style

When working on European Union (EU) documents, consistency is key. Most documents in all 24 official languages have to be translated into English. That's a lot of text to be made consistent! PerfectIt™ for Word automates how to follow it right within Microsoft Word, with all of the rules built in!

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Styles Daniel Heuman Styles Daniel Heuman

Five Things to Check in Australian Government Style

Australian Government Style is the preferred style of writing for most commonwealth, state, territory and local government departments, as well as many universities and private sector organizations. PerfectIt™ for Word automates how to follow it right within Microsoft Word, with all of the rules built in.

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Product News, Styles, Business of Editing PerfectIt Product News, Styles, Business of Editing PerfectIt

PerfectIt 4.1: Editors Into Educators

The new version of PerfectIt is a bigger deal than that “.1” suggests. As with any new software version, it has lots of small fixes and improvements. However, it has one huge new capability. For the first time, you can control exactly what PerfectIt checks. Now you can turn PerfectIt into a custom checker designed (by you) to lift writing standards at your organization.

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Business of Editing PerfectIt Business of Editing PerfectIt

What Can You Teach with PerfectIt?

If you build your preferences into PerfectIt, then it can help raise writing standards at your organization. If there’s text that you don’t have time to check, you can use PerfectIt to help your colleagues avoid errors. Even on documents that you will check, PerfectIt can help your colleagues identify errors earlier and improve their own writing.

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Legal Writing PerfectIt Legal Writing PerfectIt

Making Intangible Document Knowledge Finally Tangible

During the drafting and filing process, every legal professional develops tacit knowledge of local rules, court preferences, and judge’s pet peeves. That knowledge goes into every filing. However, the valuable know-how behind those choices is usually left undocumented. When the employee who did the work leaves, or if a long time passes, that tacit knowledge is lost. What can we do to change that?

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Business of Editing Zygmunt Andrew Spray Business of Editing Zygmunt Andrew Spray

How to Decide If You Should Italicize Foreign Words and Phrases

It’s easy to press the italics button in Microsoft Word, but have you ever wondered if you’re using italics correctly? One of the common uses of italic type is for words and phrases that are in a foreign language. You might have noticed that documents in English use italics if, for example, any French, German or Latin words appear.

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Proposal Writing PerfectIt Proposal Writing PerfectIt

Five Tips for Writing a Winning Proposal

Writing a proposal is hard. There’s rarely enough time to give it the attention you want. You don’t always know much about the client, so you feel like you’re writing in the dark. The client may have an unrealistic budget, meaning your cost will knock you out of the running, no matter how well you’ve described your solution. What’s more, they may already have an awardee in mind and are only going through an RFP process as a formality.

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Styles PerfectIt Styles PerfectIt

Structure and Style: Eight Tips for Better Training Material

Did you know? The first few days in a new job have a lasting impact on engagement, satisfaction and productivity. In order to get a new employee’s best work, your training materials must be effective, immersive, and flawless. This article shows how to make sure your training materials are the best they can be so that new employees at your organization get the best start possible.

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Legal Writing PerfectIt Legal Writing PerfectIt

Is Proofreading Billable Legal Work?

What is billable legal work? Possibly not proofreading. The task of proofreading is both all-important and unimportant. Billable and nonbillable. Because the cosmetic perfection of legal documents serves as a proxy for our legal abilities, proofreading gains outsized importance.

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Legal Writing PerfectIt Legal Writing PerfectIt

Don’t Hate the Bluebook

There’s no faster way for law students, lawyers, law clerks, and judges to bond than through shared hatred for the Bluebook. Conversation grinding to a halt? Simply throw out a casual gripe about the Bluebook! It doesn’t need any substance or specifics. “Ugh…the Bluebook” will do.

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Legal Writing PerfectIt Legal Writing PerfectIt

Cognitive Load: The Hidden Cost of Proofreading Errors in Legal Writing

Legal writing is intellectually complex—both for the writer and the reader. At its core, legal writing builds relationships among ideas. Litigators will use pieces of caselaw from many sources to state a simple three-element claim. And transactional lawyers will manage legal implications from real estate, tax, and contract law, among others, to draft a short agreement.

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Styles PerfectIt Styles PerfectIt

Writing a Style Guide: What You Need to Know

In publishing and media companies, use of a style guide is the norm. However, style guides can also be useful for any organization that prepares documents for clients and the public. This article is for organizations outside of the publishing industry who can benefit from the introduction of a style guide.

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Legal Writing PerfectIt Legal Writing PerfectIt

Billing and Burnout: Are You a Lawyer or a Word Processor?

Dissatisfaction with the practice of law can often be attributed to the fact that lawyers spend nearly as much time acting as word processors as they do solving complex and interesting legal problems. Ironically, clients are also dissatisfied with the amount of time spent on document preparation. Combined it leads to lawyers facing extreme billing pressure, boredom, and burnout all at once.

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Proposal Writing

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