A TOPSY-TURVY approach to creativity is helping many people and businesses in Cumbria find the right words to promote their products, services and campaigns. Editorial services company Fit to Print, based in Dacre, near Penrith, unlocks the power of words by working backwards.

In Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, the King advises the White Rabbit to: “begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end: then stop”. “I’ve never found this a very helpful piece of creative advice,” says Fit to Print's Alison Turnbull. An award-winning health journalist with a reputation for plain speaking – and writing – she jumps straight into the readers' shoes and starts with their questions. “Think about what your reader wants to know,” she says. “Ask the question from their perspective – then seek out reassuring and authoritative answers, and your copy will magically write itself.”

“Often our clients know what they want to see in their brochures and leaflets, but not what they want to say,” says Howard Turner of Prontaprint in Kendal. “As a result, designs can pile up in our in-tray waiting for the words to come through. Working with Fit to Print's copywriting services helps us to free up the logjam. Our clients are happy with a complete job well done, which in turn helps our cash flow. And our creative team can quickly and confidently turn their talents to new projects.”

Among Prontaprint clients to have their brochures and leaflets written by Fit to Print are the Priory Lifestyle Graythwaite Court development and the Sunnybrow Clinic at Grange-over-Sands, Fletchers Recruitment in Bowness, Customate Solutions in Ingleton and numerous hotels, pubs, cafes and B & Bs around the Lake District.

“Working with Prontaprint is a two-way partnership,” says Turnbull, “as they have opened up a market that we wouldn't have tapped alone.” Fit to Print offers a full range of services to speed up the process of putting words down on paper or up on the web. These include sub-editing, copy-editing, proofreading, page layout and portable document format (pdf). The company's strength is in content “makeover” – which Alison Turnbull likens to pruning roses. “We take out all the words in a document that don’t mean anything, so that the real message – the selling point or the campaign call to action – blossoms all by itself.”

Mike Ridyard, of Carlisle-based web developers frugle.co.uk, says: “My old website was full of words that were fine for other ‘techies’ who spoke my language – but not for the web novices I was trying to reach. Fit to Print showed me how to turn ‘bespoke interactive functionality’ into ‘websites that work for you’. Many of my clients have now benefited from her refreshing ‘no-bull’ approach to web content, which complements my designs with a clean, uncluttered feel.”

Frugle’s clients include Warwick Square Osteopathic Practice (www.wsqo.co.uk ) in Carlisle. Partner Stephen Bolger says: “Fit to Print helped us realise that we needed to describe what we do in a way that people would understand and relate to. They helped us get rid of the jargon and keep things short, straightforward and interesting. Our new web content explains what we do in a way that is accessible and reassuring. We hadn't thought about including case studies, but they are a perfect way to show the wide range of people and conditions that we treat.”

A recent addition to the Fit to Print portfolio is grammar, spelling and content workshops – a lively and fun way to dispel old memories of English lessons and spelling tests. Large organisations producing multi-author documents can benefit from an outsider who sees the big picture, can spot the omissions and duplications and apply a consistent style to the document. One participant in a recent content workshop said that the resulting document ‘was greater than the sum of its parts’.

Fit to Print can be contacted on 017684 86804 or email This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .