Occasionally, I get a request from a client to take their existing articles and rewrite each one with a fresh voice or style. I usually look at these types of projects with a bit of suspicion, as I wonder if the articles are owned by the client or swiped from someone else. I only proceed if I am confident that the articles are, indeed, the intellectual property of the person possessing them.
Once I get the articles in hand, I look over each one carefully to see what must be done to whip them into shape. I must tell you I have received some of the worst written rubbish from gleeful clients expecting me to improve upon their initial poor efforts. Lets just say that I never tell my clients exactly what I think of their original work, but I am not shy about doing a hatchet job on an article either!
I like red pens and I bring one out and start crossing out sentences, correcting grammar, adjusting paragraphs, and inserting my notes. There are times when my marks seem to outnumber the words that were previously typed or written.
If the client gives to me the project on diskette, I simply insert the diskette [after running a virus check, of course] and print out...