The Code of Practice states that professionals should “deliver work that is accurate, well-crafted, and fit for purpose” and “take responsibility for the quality of our output.”
Quality assurance is how you ensure your work meets professional standards before it reaches the client.
Quality issues damage more than just individual projects:
Errors in delivered work undermine trust. Clients remember mistakes long after they forget good work.
Quality problems create extra work for clients and erode confidence in your abilities.
Rework costs time and money. Errors that reach publication can have legal or regulatory consequences.
Flag anything that raises legal, ethical or regulatory concerns, and build these checks into your QA process.
Personal satisfaction
It’s demoralising to discover errors after delivery. Good QA lets you send work with confidence.
Effective QA is systematic, not random:
Build checking time into project schedules. Rushing QA defeats its purpose. Around 15-20% of the total project time is a useful benchmark, depending on the complexity and risk of the work.
Memory is unreliable. A written checklist ensures you check the same things every time, even when tired or rushed.
Review work in a different environment than you wrote it: different device, different location, printed out. Fresh context can highlight issues.
Distance improves objectivity. Review work after a break, not immediately after writing.
The overnight test
Whenever possible, let work sit overnight before final review. Problems that were invisible at 6pm become obvious at 9am.
A comprehensive QA checklist covers multiple categories:
Different errors need different approaches. Keep in mind that checking and reviewing can be hard, tiring work that requires your full focus. It’s not usually a task to be rushed or scheduled at the end of a busy day.
Two-pass minimum
At minimum, do two separate review passes — one for content and meaning, one for technical accuracy. Trying to check everything at once means checking nothing properly.
These errors appear frequently in copy:
Sometimes self-review isn’t enough:
For important or sensitive content, having someone else review reduces risk.
If you’re not expert in the subject, have someone knowledgeable verify accuracy.
On longer documents, fatigue affects quality. A fresh reviewer catches what you’ve become blind to.
After many revisions, you can’t see the copy objectively. Someone new brings perspective.
Quality assurance is what separates professional work from amateur work. It’s not glamorous, but it’s essential. A systematic QA process — with checklists, scheduled time, and appropriate techniques — ensures your work is accurate, consistent, and error-free.
Build QA into your workflow, not as an afterthought but as an integral part of every project. Your reputation depends on it.