How To Prepare Your White Paper for Publication

What Are the Steps To Prepare for Publication?

So, you have your document ready for publication! Congratulations – this is a really good feeling when this stage is reached.

The first thing you should do is take a break.

Seriously.

Have a rest.

It is almost impossible to carry out a thorough edit check at this point, as you are currently too close to the writing and therefore may miss errors that you will catch once you’ve had time to distance yourself from the writing for a while.

Other than this important point, there are a series of additional steps to follow now to ensure a successful publication.

These steps are:

Do a self-edit check
Ask a colleague or friend to do a peer edit check
Do a final edit check before the design phase starts
Send to design (unless you are designing the white paper yourself)
Check the design version
Have a second peer review
Do a final edit check before publication

This may seem like a rather overly cumbersome list of checks. However, to ensure the credibility of the white paper, it should meet, as closely as possible, the standards that would be required of a print publication.

This necessarily requires a diligent, strict process. You should understand the sub-steps involved for each step.

What’s Involved in a Self-Edit Check?

Before you ask anyone else to read your work, you should have a good level of confidence yourself that most of the white paper is written how you want it.

Therefore, you should follow a rigorous process that will involve multiple re-readings of the document, without being tempted to consolidate any of these in order to reduce the number of re-readings, as this is important.

A process may look something like this:

Read the white paper throughout from end to end and ensure that you can easily follow its structure. You should be able to write your structural document in reverse now, using the white paper. Without going back to your notes, make sure that you can do this – and if you can’t, review the sections where you are having issues.
Read the white paper again, and now ensure that all points that you make are accurate, credible, and defensible. The points should all be evidence-backed. Make sure this is so and double check the source and the spellings of any companies or names that you are quoting.
Read the white paper again to ensure that chapter titles, headings and subheadings are consistent throughout and that they are clearly marked as chapter titles, main headings and subheadings. If you are going to send this to a designer, these instructions will need to be clear.
Double check spellings and information on any graphics that you are including, as well as making sure that graphics have the correct titles and descriptions.
Re-read the white paper again to check for grammar, spelling and editing issues.

Have a checklist with the steps that you are going to follow written out and tick them off as you progress, to ensure that you are not tempted to cut corners at this stage of the white paper production process.

What Do You Ask Your Peers To Look for in the Peer Edit Check?

All too often when a document is sent to another person to review, there is little instruction given with regards to what that person should be doing.

Therefore, they usually read through, point out a few grammatical or spelling errors and then return the document to the requestor.

However, there is much more that could be achieved during this stage if some extra guidance is provided to your colleague.

First, they should read the white paper from beginning to end, without paying any attention to checking. After the first read, ask them to summarize the white paper very briefly – simple note form bullet points are fine. They should be close to the planning document you prepared before writing the white paper. If they are unable to summarize the points, then it’s possible that your structure has become lost or that you need to strengthen the impact of some of the core arguments. This can be done verbally as well – the most important point is that this is done so you can determine how tightly you have written the paper.

That’s the test for part one – that the paper is well structured, has a clear objective and includes memorable takeaways.

Part two should involve a closer review by the checker.

Ask them to pay attention to any stated facts throughout and ensure that they seem accurate, credible and defensible.

Also, ask them to note any spelling or grammar concerns.

What’s the final edit check before design?

As well as incorporating any changes from the peer check, you should now review the spelling and grammar in detail:

Run the spelling and grammar check using software tools, such as Grammarly.
If you’re using Microsoft Word, review the suggestions in the …
Make sure that, when you’re using acronyms, that you have written out the full expression on the first occasion it is introduced, and that you have kept the way in which you have written it consistent throughout. For instance, do not switch between BBC and B.B.C. For avoidance of doubt, acronyms are best written without any punctuation (BBC), whereas abbreviations should have a full stop at the end (for example: limited becomes Ltd).
If you have used company names or quoted individuals from companies, it’s always worth doing a double check, for example using LinkedIn. Names, in particular, can be easily misspelled.
Make sure you have clearly identified what are the chapter titles, the major headings within chapters, and the subheadings. You may put these into bold and use 16, 14 and 12 font size to differentiate
Make sure you provide a contents page and that the chapter titles match throughout the document.
Look out for the use of capital letters in headings and titles. You should either use sentence case or title case. Whichever you choose, this should be applied throughout.
Check that all diagrams or other images have either the correct titles, descriptions or both.
Try to complete all checks at this stage. Ideally, there should be no further changes once it goes for graphic design treatment. Remember that the designers will spend much of their time on ensuring a professional layout, which factors in the length of sentences and paragraphs, so major changes to the text after this has been done are not recommended and best avoided.

Design Version Check

Once you have received the document back from design, it is worth checking the following aspects have been applied correctly:

Chapter titles are correct
Page numbers for chapters are correct
All images and diagrams have the correct titles and descriptions
All text from the original has been incorporated into the design version
Everything is correctly placed

Second Peer Review

If you have time and the resource, it is always worth asking someone to read your final document.

Final Check Before Publication

At this stage, you should be good to publish.

However, as much as you may not wish to, it is worth doing a final read of the document, again focusing on spelling and grammar.

This is your last chance now to ensure that the version that is published is fully correct.

While changes might be possible after publication, it is best to avoid this, especially if you’re working with other teams or colleagues whose workloads might be impacted by such a change.