Services

Ask ten different editors about their approach to editing, and you’ll get ten different answers. Some editors take a hands‑off approach and limit themselves to correcting basic errors and cleaning up only the most obvious mechanical and stylistic issues. I am not one of those editors. I tend to dig in deep and give a text a thorough working over. Making content good isn’t enough for me; I want to make content great.

COPYEDITING includes a thorough review of your content to correct mistakes in grammar, spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and text formatting. I’ll also clean up syntax and refine your word choice. If necessary, I’ll also look at layouts, graphics, captions, tables, and infographics.

SUBSTANTIVE EDITING is sort of like copyediting on steroids. However, it’s usually undertaken earlier in the writing process than copyediting, and it can involve significant redrafting and restructuring. For substantive editing projects, I’ll identify thematic and logical problems in your content and offer guidance to help you get focused and on track. And if the project demands, I’ll even do some subject‑matter research and fact‑checking.

DEVELOPMENTAL EDITING is a deep, full‑project collaboration. This service is ideal for academic papers and journal articles, e‑Learning modules, essays, news and feature stories, books, and large corporate communication projects. I’ll work with you from start to finish to develop, construct, compose, and perfect your content. Along the way, I’ll be both devil’s advocate and your guardian angel.

Every writer has trouble at some point objectively analyzing and evaluating their own work. Stepping back far enough to get proper perspective can often be nearly impossible. That’s where I come in. I will analyze your content from the level of the individual words all the way up to its overarching structure and themes while always keeping in mind the needs and expectations of your audience. Then I’ll provide you with a comprehensive report of my findings, which will include detailed suggestions for improving your content. Almost any type of content can benefit from this sort of review — resumes and cover letters, proposals, presentations, instructional materials, web content, speeches, articles, and academic papers are just a few examples.

Sometimes content needs to be taken back to the drawing board and broken down, redesigned, and rebuilt. Maybe you’ve managed to piece together all or most of the essential components of your project, but you haven’t been able to engineer and organize those materials into an effective delivery mechanism for your ideas. Or perhaps you have existing content that needs to be updated or adapted for other purposes but you’re not able to take on the job yourself. I’ll help you restructure and reshape your content into the desired form. Depending on the demands of project, I may bring in one or more of my longtime colleagues to collaborate — one is a highly skilled graphic designer, and the other is a writer-editor with special expertise in a variety of subject matter and media.

We’ve all found ourselves in a content emergency at one time or another. Think about it. Maybe you were overwhelmed by the pressure of writing a sensitive email to the executive leadership at your organization. Or it could have been an important presentation you had to put together without warning. Or perhaps you found the perfect job opportunity, but the application deadline was looming and you needed to write the best cover letter of your life immediately. I can help you overcome any content challenge. We’ll work together to evaluate and understand your audience in order to craft content that pinpoints their particular needs and expectations. I’ll help you determine exactly what to say and how to say it.