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Definition of Terms

Short Proofing = we, the service provider: referred to either by this name or in the first person plural: we/us

Proofer = the individual from Short Proofing who completes your required service

You = the user of our website and/or of Short Proofing’s services, also customer or client

Processing data = is to be understood as one or more of the following: a) collection or recording; b) adaption or alteration; c) retrieval, consultation, or use;  d) disclosure;  e) alignment or combination; f) restriction, erasure, or destruction

Personal data = information related to an identifiable person

Data subject = individuals to whom this information correlates

Data access request = the request of a data subject, for instance, to access the information held on them. 

Automated decision making = decisions made with no human involvement

Personal data breach = when personal data, accidentally or unlawfully, is destroyed, lost, altered, or disclosed.  

 

 

 

OUR COMMITMENT TO YOU

 

• Focus: we will leave no stone unturned to provide you with the best service we can.

• Ambition: we are constantly striving to improve and will always take time to address valid concerns and feedback.

• Reliability:  We will return your work to you on-time, every time, though we ask you to take any exceptional circumstances into account, such as broadband/power outages. 

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 YOUR COMMITMENT

 

• To review all of our suggestions and comments, though we also provide a clean copy of your work  

• Where applicable, to check your organisation’s guidelines on proofreading/copyediting yourself 

• To take responsibility for any damages you may incur through the use of this service  

• To accept sole liability for the content of your document at all times; Short Proofing, for example, does not check for plagiarism, is not responsible for libellous statements, nor infringements of copyright legislation. 

• To make any enquiries concerning returned work within the agreed period of one month after the return date; after the period of one month, correspondence with you will have been deleted

 

FURTHER TERMS AND CONDITIONS 

 

Services

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Short Proofing’s sole concern is to help you express your ideas more accurately and clearly. We offer proofreading and copyediting services in accordance with the definitions outlined in the Services section of this website. Short Proofing is not responsible for checking issues of formatting, referencing, or plagiarism in relation to your submitted work. 

 

Right of Refusal and Termination of Service

 

Short Proofing reserves the right to decline to complete a requested service for any reason and at any time, though the cause of this will usually be clearly communicated to you. For instance, we could not accept a 15,000 word document to copyedit within an hour, due to obvious time constraints.

 

 

In the highly unlikely event that we are forced to terminate a service before completion, we will return the work we have done along with the portion of the fee corresponding to the incomplete remainder. Termination could arise due to a breach of condition or trust on your part, a broadband and/or power cut, or your proofer suffering a personal emergency.

 

Likewise, as a client, you can cancel a service at any time before the work has been returned, though refunds will be issued at the discretion of Short Proofing, taking into account factors including, but not limited to, administration fees and editing time already spent. 

 

 

 

Pricing and Agreeing on a Service

 

The price guide offered on our Pricing page is only that: a guide. A proper quote will not be provided until your work has been submitted. In certain cases, the price range may not reflect the level of time-investment a piece demands and, as such, the quote we provide will have to be adjusted. 

Upon receiving your quote by email, you may then decide whether or not to proceed with a service. Should you wish to agree to the terms proffered, we ask that you respond to our email and transfer the agreed fee to the bank account provided. The requested service will commence upon receipt of payment and not before. 

 

In respect of the return period, we will often be able to return work before the agreed deadline, though you should not bank on this. The timer begins upon confirmed receipt of payment. For instance, though you might communicate agreement in response to our quoted price and send us your written work, the 168-hour clock for a seven-day service does not begin ticking until you have received an email invoice from us, confirming the receipt of fee.

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Data Protection

 

Short Proofing is a secure service which you can trust; to demonstrate this, we will explain to you the sort of data protection measures we implement, in accordance with recent legislation such as the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679 and the United Kingdom’s Data Protection Act 2018. 

 

You provide non-sensitive personal data, such as your name, email address and/or telephone number, on the basis of consent and/or in order for us to complete the service agreed. We will never disclose any such information to any external third-party, except when required to by law. We do not make automated decisions or carry out profiling with your data. No issue of out of date information should arise, as we process only your name and email address, as supplied by you, for the purpose of returning your work to you by the agreed date. 

 

All email and telephone correspondence will be deleted after the period of one month has elapsed. 

 

Written Work Submitted

 

That aside, there is also the written work itself, which you send us electronically. Once submitted, these documents are only processed for the purpose of performing the proofreading and/or copyediting service, or for internal quality-control exercises; they will never be published on a public forum without your prior consent or disclosed to a third party, except when we are required to do so by law. 

 

After returning the edited version and a clean copy, the proofer will retain the copies on a private laptop for the period of one month. As such, you have up until one month to query any returned work. If enquiries are made, we will wait a further month after their resolution before deleting the completed documents and record of correspondence.  This one-month window not only allows dialogue in reference to services rendered, but also allows us to carry out internal quality control, which we do routinely. After the month has elapsed, your work will be deleted. For our records, we will retain details such as type of service, length of text, fee received, and date of completion, after this period of one month has expired.

 

Quality Control

 

We carry out quality control to ensure our service is constantly improving and never dips below our high standards. Since this is not absolutely necessary to the performance of an agreed service, you are more than welcome to opt-out of quality-control processes. If you do not wish for your work to be subject to ratification, we ask only that you state as much prior to submission. 

 

 

Queries/concerns about your data

 

Hopefully, you now understand and feel comfortable with the way Short Proofing processes your data. 

 

You might become a data subject when you make an enquiry to Short Proofing, thereby providing your name, email address and/or telephone number, information from which you might be identified. As a data subject, you have several rights under UK and EU law.  You can request access to, in other words a copy of data held on you, have it rectified, or even erased. You might consult relevant legislation for a more comprehensive understanding of your rights as a data subject: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/data-protection-rights-for-data-subjects/data-protection-rights-for-data-subjects.

 

Short Proofing will respond to any data access requests within the statutory one month period, though it should be noted that repeated and/or unreasonable requests, which would entail a disproportionate amount of time and manpower, might invoke a fee. 

 

In the UK, you even have the right to complain to the ICO, if you feel as though your request has not been properly handled: https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/. 

 

In the unlikely event of a personal data breach, all data subjects will be informed forthwith. The risk to data subjects will be assessed and, if necessary, the breach will be reported to the ICO. 

 

If you have any concerns about how your data is being processed, please do not hesitate to get in touch with our Data Protection Officer, Andrew Short, who can be reached at andrew@shortproofing.com. 

 

 

PRIVACY POLICY

 

Visiting our Website 

 

You use the Short Proofing website at your own risk. 

 

As outlined above in the discussion of our data protection policy, an action such as filling-out an enquiry form will provide us with your personal data. However, all visits to our website provide certain data, such as, but not limited to, the accessing IP address, web-browser type, domain names, and access times. 

 

None of this is personal data, in so far as you cannot be identified from it. This website is supported by WIX, whose privacy policy is publicly available: https://www.wix.com/about/privacy.  In this respect, it is to be expected that WIX, a third-party, are privy to this sort of harvested data when you access our website. 

 

Cookies

 

Upon entering our website, you will have been asked to agree to our cookies policy. Data is collected to ensure that the website continues to function as smoothly as possible. All cookies collected are handled directly by WIX and abide by the privacy policy as listed above.

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Once again, you have any questions about our Terms and Conditions or our Privacy Policy, please do not hesitate to contact us.