A portfolio is a working document, not a monument. It should answer three questions in under a minute: what you write, how well you write it, and how to hire you. Plenty of otherwise strong portfolios fail on the third one because nobody checked whether the contact form still works.
Before you publish a new page, a new sample or a full site refresh, work through the twelve checks below. They take an afternoon and save a great deal of quiet embarrassment.
Your bio is doing more work than you think
A bio is not a personality test. It is a signpost. Say what you write, who you write it for, and where the work has appeared. "Features and reports on housing, transport and local government, with bylines in regional newspapers and trade titles" tells an editor far more than three sentences about curiosity and strong coffee.
Keep a short version and a long one. Guest post forms usually want around 50 words; an about page can carry 150 to 200. Write both now, while you are not staring at an empty box at eleven at night.
Three lengths worth having ready
- 30 words — formal bylines and conference listings.
- 50 to 80 words — guest post footers and directory profiles.
- 150 to 200 words — your about page, with one or two named titles.
Update it when your focus shifts. A bio that still describes you as a budding copywriter three years after you went full time is a small credibility leak.
Contact details that actually reach you
Use one address you check daily, and keep it separate from the inbox behind your bank statements. Add a contact form as a fallback, then test it from a phone and a different browser. Forms break silently after a plugin update, and you will hear about it only when someone mentions it in passing.
Decide what else to publish. City is usually enough — editors want your time zone and whether you can attend a launch. A phone number is optional; if you list one, use a number you can switch off. Say what you want to be contacted about and how quickly you normally reply.
Samples at the lengths you want to be commissioned for
The most common mistake is a portfolio full of 2,000-word essays when the work you want arrives in 700-word chunks. Show the range you would like to be paid for. If a commission would be 400 words on a product launch, have a 400-word sample on the page.
- 250 to 400 words — news, briefs, product copy.
- 600 to 900 words — features, explainers, opinion.
- 1,200 to 2,000 words — long reads, reports, case studies.
Label each piece with its word count and format, then add a line on what it shows: a tight news intro, a structure for a complicated explainer, an interview turned into narrative. Do not leave an editor to guess.
Say where each piece appeared
Add the publication, the month and year, and a sentence of context. If a piece ran on a client site you cannot name, describe the sector instead: "commissioned by a regional housing association" is honest and still useful. Do not round a spec piece up into a commission. The difference tends to surface in the first conversation, and it costs you more than the sample was worth.
Rights: what you can safely republish
Ownership is not automatically yours just because you wrote the words. Staff contracts, work-for-hire agreements, ghostwriting and client retainers can all restrict where a piece may appear, and embargoes or exclusivity windows matter too.
Keep the paperwork findable — a folder of contracts and emails is enough. Where a clause is unclear, ask before you post. For anything with real money or risk attached, take proper legal advice rather than relying on a forum thread.
An easy default: if you cannot show the piece, describe it. A line in a selected work list can carry the credit even when the text cannot be published.
Privacy, permissions and other people's details
Portfolios are public and indexed. Before publishing, check for names, job titles, email addresses, phone numbers and any detail that could identify a private individual. Ask for written permission before using a client's name, a customer photograph or a quote from a case study, and keep those replies.
If you handle personal data, UK data protection rules generally expect you to have a lawful basis for publishing it and to keep it accurate. When in doubt, redact or describe rather than name. A line noting that client details are shared only with permission reads as professional, not secretive.
British English consistency
Mixed spelling is the quickest way to look unfinished. Choose a style and apply it everywhere: headings, captions, alt text, meta descriptions and the samples themselves. If you write for a publication with its own style guide, say that you can follow theirs.
- -ise or -ize — both appear in UK publishing, but pick one. Most UK outlets use -ise.
- Quotation marks — single marks for speech, double inside, with punctuation outside the closing mark unless it belongs to the quote.
- Dates — 3 March 2025, not March 3rd.
- Word pairs — licence (noun) and license (verb); practice (noun) and practise (verb); dependent (adjective) and dependant (person).
- Spellings — colour, organise, travelling, judgement, programme, with whilst used sparingly.
- Measurements — metric first, imperial in brackets where the audience needs it.
Set your spellcheck to UK English, then read for the words it happily misses. "Organize" slips through some checkers because it is a valid American spelling, not a typo.
The final pass before you publish
Read the whole page aloud. It catches duplicated words, sentences that run out of breath, and places where you have slipped into a different voice. Then do the boring checks: click every link, view the page on a phone, and look at it logged out. Make sure image alt text describes the image rather than repeating your name.
Finally, save a plain-text copy of each sample and note the date it went up. Portfolios change, and having the original text to hand makes revisions straightforward. Diarise a review every six months, and you will never have to rebuild the whole thing in a panic.
