Terms and conditions

Last updated 7^th January 2026

If you don’t want to agree to one or more of the terms, please notify Clare of the paragraph(s) in question (emailing contact@clareproof.com), and we can negotiate a bespoke contract.

Throughout the terms and conditions, the Contractor is me, Clare. The Client is anyone paying me for editing services. The Subcontractor is anyone I pay to carry out a portion of the work. (Subcontracting copyediting, proofreading and/or formatting allows me to work at shorter notice and provide a faster turnaround, but it will only ever happen if agreed with the Client in advance, in writing.)

General

1. Clare Robinson (hereafter, the Contractor) will provide service(s) as mutually agreed, confirmed in writing by the Client.
2. The Contractor confirms that she is self-employed, is responsible for her own income tax and National Insurance contributions, and will not claim benefits granted to the Client’s employees.
3. The completed work will be delivered on or before the date agreed, for the agreed fee, which will be based on the description of the work required and the brief, both supplied by the Client.
4. If, during the term of the Contractor’s work, additional tasks are requested by the Client, the Contractor may renegotiate the fee and/or the deadline.
5. The nature and content of the work will be kept confidential and not made known to anyone other than the Client and Contractor without prior written permission.
6. Unless agreed otherwise at the outset, payment will be made within 30 days of receipt of the Contractor’s invoice, according to the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998 (amended 2002 and 2013).
7. The Contractor accepts payment via direct bank transfer (to a GBP account), to a Wise account or with a bank card using an online platform (Stripe), as agreed in advance by email. The currency for billing must be agreed in advance.
8. Either the Client or the Contractor has the right to terminate a contract for services if there is a serious breach of its terms.

Service-level agreement

9. The Contractor will complete the tasks agreed within the scope of the brief, within the agreed timeframe and for the agreed fee (all established by email before project start).
10. The agreed fee may be a range that depends on the final size and content of an unfinished document: the Contractor will not exceed the agreed upper limit without consulting the Client. If the Contractor feels the upper limit of the quote is no longer feasible, the Contractor and Client may renegotiate the fee or the level of service (say, choosing to proofread the document but not format it).
11. Proofreading and copyediting services are intended to ensure the accuracy, clarity and consistency of language and presentation. They do not aim to develop a text’s essential content or ideas.
12. Editing and quality assurance (or quality checking) include feedback on the appropriateness of the content, the structure of the document and may include data checking (or spot checking).
13. Fact checking is a discrete task not usually offered by the Contractor. However, the Contractor will flag obvious errors or inconsistencies on facts that can reasonably be considered general knowledge.
14. If the text will be submitted for assessment, admission to a competitive programme or similar, it is the Client’s responsibility to ensure that the level of editing provided is permissible under the terms of the assessment/admissions process. Universities and academic publishers can consider undeclared editing as unethical, and the Contractor does not accept liability for any consequences this may cause.
15. For each new client, the Contractor will supply a sample edit allowing the Client to check the level of intervention with relevant stakeholders (e.g., dissertation supervisors, awarding bodies, submission panels).

Subcontracting

16. The Contractor may – with prior written agreement from the Client – subcontract parts of the work. Typically, this will be formatting and basic proofreading. In all cases where Subcontractors are used, the Contractor will quality check the changes and make final edits.
17. All Subcontractors have signed a contract which obtains their agreement to abide by the terms set out in relevant sections of the current document (use of artificial intelligence, data security, confidentiality).
18. On request, the Contractor can anonymise documents (removing identifying factors like surnames, institute names, etc.) before they are sent to the Subcontractor.

Communication

19. Communication will generally be made via email, to an @clareproof.com account.
20. The Contractor’s normal hours of communication are Monday to Friday, 09:00 to 16:00 UK time. Messages received outside of this time probably won’t be read until 09:00 the following weekday. The Contractor aims to reply to emails within 24 hours. Emails will be replied to within 48 hours, unless an out-of-office autoreply indicates otherwise.
21. The Client is under no obligation to respond to emails from the Contractor within a certain timeframe. However, the Client should be aware that delays to queries may impact the service and/or timeframe (if, say, the Contractor has to take editorial decisions that would normally be agreed with the Client).
22. Each individual project allows up to 20 minutes of video or phone call. Calls exceeding this will be billed as work outside of scope at £35/hour.
23. Video and phone calls will be scheduled in advance.

Use of artificial intelligence

24. Except for Microsoft Word’s basic in-built tools (e.g., Read Aloud, grammar and spelling suggestions using Editor), the Contractor does not use editing tools that use artificial intelligence (AI). This includes Copilot, Draftsmith and Grammarly.
25. No part of the Clients’ intellectual property will be input into a tool that uses AI. Client details (names, fees and contact details) will be logged in the Contractor’s accounting software, FreeAgent. FreeAgent uses AI to categorise bank transactions, and use of Client data should be minimal (see FreeAgent’s statement on its use of AI).

Data security

26. Client data (including documents, personal information and intellectual property) is stored securely. Emails and attachments are stored using Google Workspace, secured with multi-factor authentication. Client documents are saved in Microsoft OneDrive, secured with multi-factor authentication. Hardware used to access this is protected with a password or biometric data.
27. Subcontractors have agreed that client data and documents will be stored on devices that are password protected, or have equivalent security or higher (e.g., biometric security).
28. The Contractor uses the editing tool PerfectIt: this is a Word extension which temporarily transfers a document’s contents to a cloud server. Transmitted documents are encrypted and are not available to anyone but the user (full PerfectIt privacy statement here).
29. On request, the Contractor can anonymise documents (removing identifying factors like surnames, institute names, etc.) before they are sent to a Subcontractor.

Warranty

30. The Contractor makes no representations to the publishability or profitability of the edited manuscript. Fact checking is not a part of the Contractor’s normal services and the Contractor will not vouch for the accuracy of the content.
31. Certain aspects of editing are subjective (e.g., rewording for clarity, optimal word use). The Client may accept or reject any such changes. The Client may choose to accept none, some or all of the Contractor’s changes or suggestions. A decision to decline changes does not constitute non-performance on the Contractor’s part and does not entitle the Client to a full or partial refund.
32. The Contractor strives for perfection, but cannot guarantee it. A common benchmark for satisfactory editorial work is that an experienced editor should find 95% of errors in a text, and must not introduce any errors that weren’t there in the first place (explained in detail here). The Contractor follows this definition for quality editing.
33. In matters aside from accuracy, the Contractor follows the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading’s Professional Practice Code and its definitions of professional editorial service.
34. If, following completion of the tasks, the Client believes the work has not been completed to a professional standard, the following steps will be taken:
    1. If the work is returned late without sufficient explanation (e.g., there haven’t been any changes made to the project’s scope, or the original documents were sent late by the Client), the Client’s bill will be partially reduced according to the lateness. For instance, if a document has a five-day turnaround and is one working day late, then the final bill would be reduced by 20%.
    2. In cases of outright errors left in the document, the Client should flag any errors (or an example of a type of error) and return the document. The Contractor will carry out the necessary changes as soon as possible for no extra charge.
    3. On receipt of completed work, the Client may notice things they would have changed (e.g., changing ‘organize’ to ‘organise’ in a document in UK English). In publishing, these are understood to be style preferences rather than errors. In that case, the Contractor will keep a record of the Client’s style preferences for future work. (The Client is encouraged to give their style preferences before project start. If there’s no preferred style to follow, the Contractor will apply whichever style is most consistent and accepted in UK/US conventions. If there’s inconsistency in style, the Contractor generally follows the Oxford English Dictionary and Hart’s New Rules for UK English, and the Chicago Manual of Style for US English.)