Frequently Asked Questions

Our clients are primarily UN agencies, multilateral development banks, global health organisations, foundations, government departments, non-government organisations and private sector entities. We also work with academic institutions, research councils and charities. We have delivered projects for organisations across international development, public health, climate, environment, natural resources management, forestry, agricultural development and more. If your organisation publishes rigorous, evidence-based content and needs it to be accurate, clear and professionally produced, we are likely a good fit.

Send us a project brief, a draft manuscript or a description of your project using our contact form or by emailing info@greenink.co.uk. We review your requirements and typically come back with a fixed-price quote within one working day.

For larger or more complex projects, we may need to ask a few clarifying questions or have a call to discuss the project scope first – expected document length, target audience, number of stakeholders and review rounds, deadline, languages required and whether design or accessibility compliance is needed. There is no obligation and we are happy to discuss scope and options before you commit.

Turnaround depends on the scope of work involved. Document length, level of intervention required, number of review rounds, number and complexity of graphics, and many other factors influence the time required.

Contact us well in advance if possible so we can let you know the time needed to do the various stages of your project so that you can set author deadlines and factor enough time in for production and review so that you can meet any set deadlines or when planning launch dates.

Yes. We understand that publications sometimes need to be done at short (or even zero) notice or with fixed and immoveable deadlines – manuscripts that arrive late from authors or consultants but still need to meet donor deadlines, scope that expands mid-project, unexpected windows of policy opportunity or unexpected reduction in your in-house capacity.

We regularly work to short and hard deadlines – conference dates, board meetings and policy windows – and are known for doing whatever it takes to meet a deadline we’ve agreed to. If you have an urgent requirement, contact us as early as possible and tell us your deadline. We will advise honestly on what is achievable and explain any compromises or cost implications.

We will tell you what we can achieve in the time available, what trade-offs may be necessary and how we would approach the project and suggest solutions and options. We do not overpromise on timelines that we know are not achievable and we will not compromise on quality – but we are experienced at working fast and to the highest standards when the situation demands it – though we prefer to plan to avoid the need for rush work where possible.

Copy-editing works at sentence level – correcting grammar, spelling, punctuation, inconsistencies and house style without changing the structure or content of the document. It assumes the argument is sound and the content is complete and factually accurate; it simply makes the text correct and consistent.

Substantive editing (also called developmental editing) goes further: restructuring arguments, improving the logic and flow of the analysis, tightening the relationship between evidence and conclusions, and transforming dense technical drafts into clear, readable prose. It may involve significant rewriting, reorganisation and close dialogue with the author.

Most of our clients require a combination of both. We assess the appropriate level for each manuscript before quoting and apply it consistently throughout.

Yes. We have extensive experience editing systematic reviews, clinical practice guidelines, evidence syntheses and other technical and scientific documents. Our editors understand the GRADE methodology – the systematic assessment of evidence quality, the formulation of recommendations, and the careful language that distinguishes strong from conditional guidance.

We work to the standards expected by major global health bodies and clinical guideline developers worldwide. This is not generic editing and proofreading – it requires editorial staff who can read an evidence table and know what it means so that edits don’t change nuanced meanings.

Yes. Beyond editing existing manuscripts, we provide writing and ghost-writing services for organisations that have the source material but need help shaping it into a publishable document. This covers policy briefs, technical reports, executive summaries, briefing notes, synthesis documents, lessons learned, websites, blogs and more.

Our writers have subject-matter knowledge in public health, climate, environment, natural resources management, sustainability, agricultural development, international development, humanitarian issues, gender and much more – they understand what the content means, not just how to write clearly. We also provide plain-language revision for publications that need to reach non-specialist audiences: policymakers, journalists or the general public.

We can write from background materials, transcripts, conduct online interviews or field visits with key stakeholders.

Yes. All editorial work follows the client's house or preferred style guide. We know the main UN style manual intimately, as well as the specific style guides for the UN agencies that have their own variants. We also work regularly to Chicago, Oxford and other recognised standards. Our editors are all highly experienced and used to rapidly assimilating and following whatever style guide is presented.

Where no style guide exists, we can help develop one – documenting editorial decisions, terminology preferences and formatting conventions – and apply it consistently across your publications portfolio from that point on.

For regular clients we develop sophisticated macros that cover their style guide to ensure all instances are caught and rules followed. All amendments are then double-checked by our editors when editing.

We translate into and from French, Spanish, Arabic, Portuguese (European and Latin American forms), Chinese, Russian, Bahasa Indonesia and German, with other languages available through our network of contacts. All our translators are native language speakers, subject-matter specialists in international development communications and highly experienced translators.

Every translation is checked not just for accuracy but also for readability, tone, localisation and appropriateness for the target audience. Institutional publications carry weight – imprecise translation can alter the meaning of policy recommendations or technical guidance, and our review process is designed to catch exactly those problems before they reach publication.

Yes. We handle the full range of non-Latin script production – Arabic (right-to-left), Simplified Chinese, Russian and other complex scripts. Each language version is produced by a designer who understands the typographic conventions of that script.

For Arabic publications, we produce fully mirrored layouts. French text typically runs 10–15% longer than English and often requires adjustments to accommodate longer headings or table content. Our layout specialists have the specialised software and know the nuances of the languages they work in.

If we develop the source language design for you then we ensure that the design will work across all languages you intend to publish so that the design looks good across the whole suite.

We run multilingual projects as integrated workflows, not parallel silos. A single project manager coordinates all language versions, ensuring corrections made in one language are integrated across all the others. Ideally the source language document is fully finalised prior to translation commencing but deadlines often don’t allow for this which makes tracking and integration of changes across versions critical to ensure that all the versions match.

This matters when a publication launches simultaneously in multiple languages – there is no room for one version to diverge from the approved content or be missing a critical late change. One team, one point of contact, one coordinated release.

A WCAG 2.1 AA compliant PDF can be navigated reliably by someone using assistive technology – a screen reader, magnification software or alternative input device. In practice this means the document has:

• A logical reading order that matches the visual layout
• Proper heading structure (H1, H2, H3) for navigation
• Tagged content so screen readers can interpret the document structure
• Meaningful alternative text for all images, charts and infographics
• Accessible tables with correctly defined headers
• A correctly specified document language

We build these requirements into the production process from the start – it is significantly faster and cheaper than retrofitting accessibility after the document is designed. We also test with actual assistive technology, not just automated checkers, because automated tools miss structural problems that a screen reader will stumble on.

Yes. We provide accessibility audits of existing document libraries and remediation of priority publications. Retrofitting accessibility is more time-consuming than building it in from the start, but we have well-developed workflows for remediation and can prioritise documents based on usage, audience and regulatory risk.

The European Accessibility Act, Section 508 in the United States and evolving procurement requirements across international organisations all point in the same direction: published documents must be accessible. We can help organisations assess where they stand and work through a remediation programme.

A managed publications service means we take over your entire publications function or whatever parts of it you need support with – commissioning, writing, editing, design, translation, accessibility compliance, production management and final delivery. Your team focuses on research, content and policy; we handle everything from commissioning authors or consultants, developing the manuscript to finished product. Your team just asks us for help or sends us drafts whenever needed and we scale up or down to meet your needs.

This suits organisations that publish a high volume of documents and need consistent quality without building or maintaining an in-house editorial and design operation. We become, in effect, your publications department – with the specialist skills, surge capacity and quality infrastructure that would be prohibitively expensive to replicate internally.

Yes. For organisations with a steady stream of publications, we offer retainer and framework agreements at agreed rates with the option for guaranteed capacity reserved for your organisation. You get priority access to the senior team, faster response times and avoid the need to go through formal procurement per project as rates and output levels are pre-agreed.

The compounding benefit of a framework agreement is institutional knowledge – we learn your house style, editorial preferences, approval workflows and the specific quirks of your publishing programme. That accumulated knowledge makes every subsequent project faster and more accurate.

Yes. We are happy to provide references from existing clients on request. Given the nature of our client base – international organisations, UN agencies and development banks – we adhere to their confidentiality preferences, but many of our long-standing clients are willing to speak to prospective clients about their experience of working with us.

We use AI tools where they genuinely improve efficiency and consistency – handling formatting standardisation, style-sheet consistency checks, reference verification, cross-referencing validation and metadata tagging. These are tasks that are time-consuming and inevitably subject to the possibility of human error when done manually, and so are well-suited to automated assistance followed by human cross-checks.

The editorial judgements remain with people. Subject-matter interrogation – questioning whether a claim is supported by the evidence cited, whether a recommendation follows logically from the analysis, whether a data point looks plausible – requires human expertise. Design decisions, quality assurance and the nuanced interpretation of house style and institutional tone are all human responsibilities.

AI handles the mechanical; our editors handle the meaningful. The result for clients is faster turnaround and more consistent, higher quality outputs.

Of course if your organisational policy or preference is to avoid AI use then we have the skills and are happy to follow a human-only workflow for you.

We occasionally use it to support generating content, but only under strict human oversight and where it will improve the end product or help keep a project within client budgets. The correct AI tools can be used for summarising or locating key points in background materials for instance so that the writer can then easily go to the relevant point amongst hundreds or sometimes thousands of pages of background material and extract the relevant information. Overall though our writing and editing services are entirely human-led – AI assists with mechanical quality checks and workflow efficiency, but all substantive editorial judgement and responsibility remain with our team.

An experienced editor with subject-matter knowledge fully reads, assesses and takes full responsibility for every document before it leaves our hands. When a publication is delivered by Green Ink, the content and quality are ours to stand behind.

If your organisational policy or preference is to avoid AI use altogether then we are more than happy to develop your communications using an entirely human workflow.

Yes, and we do so regularly. AI-drafted text often has a recognisable set of problems: confident-sounding claims that don't hold up, hallucinated citations, hedged language that avoids commitment where commitment is needed, and a flatness of register that reads as generic rather than authoritative. Editing AI-drafted content is not the same as editing a human draft – it requires active fact-checking, source verification and a higher level of substantive interrogation than copy-editing alone.

Our subject-matter knowledge is what makes this effective. An editor who understands clinical evidence or agricultural economics can identify a plausible-sounding but incorrect claim; a general editor cannot. If you are using AI to generate first drafts, we can turn them into publications that are accurate, credible and ready to publish.