This summer, with Covid restrictions relaxing and the long school summer holidays looming, my thoughts turned to how on earth I was going to entertain the tweenagers without spending a small fortune. I’ve always been fond of a historic house and garden (the children less so) but if there’s outdoor space then we might all be happy. Plus, when we get to visit a ruin or house maintained by English Heritage, then I get to see the great work we do for them in situ.

We have been proofreading and copy-editing work for English Heritage since 2013. From proofreading exhibition panels for Chesters Roman Fort and resource packs for the recent Painting Our Past exhibition, to copy-editing teacher and pupil activity packs for sites such as Down House (home to Charles Darwin), the team at English Heritage come to us for an accurate and responsive service.

It’s vital that errors don’t creep into the material produced by English Heritage so the interpretation managers and learning officers look to us as a safety net. We are very careful to keep an eye on elements that are easy to miss when you’ve been working on an interpretation project for a long time, including variant spellings of place names and people’s names, photo and graphics captions, and the way the panels relate to the different rooms or areas of the site. We also advised on the revising of English Heritage’s style guide – so now all of the copy is consistent across all sites, around the country.

Rebecca Rocker, Learning Manager in the Curatorial Department at English Heritage, explains:

“We have been working with Accuracy Matters for a few years to ensure our learning resources are of the highest quality they can be. As writers, we try to be as thorough as possible when drafting and finalising content, but there are always little errors that slip through the net, and we are very grateful to the team at Accuracy Matters for spotting those before we publish our materials. The proofreaders work from our organisational style guide, which is very detailed and nuanced. The team at Accuracy Matters have proven to be a very safe pair of hands when it comes to flagging inconsistencies and making editorial suggestions.”

I’m looking forward to revisiting my nearest sites – Lilleshall Abbey (for a picnic and run about) and the Iron Bridge (great for a stroll along the magnificent River Severn).

It’s a privilege to work for such a storied client and I’m looking forward to discovering more about the work English Heritage do through the projects we work on.

Photo of English Heritage’s Dover Castle site, taken by Maisie Johnson on Unsplash