Catalog of Services
The catalog below offers brief descriptions of the services I offer.
Please contact me directly for a quote about any of the services listed.
Different services can be combined for an overall project fee.
For an idea of the kinds of rates to expect, please see this article for academic editing,
and this webpage for trade nonfiction and other genres.
Please contact me directly for a quote about any of the services listed.
Different services can be combined for an overall project fee.
For an idea of the kinds of rates to expect, please see this article for academic editing,
and this webpage for trade nonfiction and other genres.
Substance
DEVELOPMENTAL EDITINGDevelopmental editing is the earliest stage at which you might hire a professional editor to look over your work. At this point, you have a full draft of your manuscript. You have a good idea of what you want the final manuscript to convey, and you are pretty sure your ideas will come together somehow. The trouble, you find, is organizing your ideas and arguments in a way that makes the whole thing work.
As a developmental editor, I will read your draft thoroughly and help you organize it to match your goals. This typically involves reordering ideas and information, making cuts and suggesting expansions, pointing out areas in need of further evidence or clarification, and making sure that, overall, the contents you present track with what you lead your reader to expect. My edits will be accompanied by an editorial letter summarizing the changes made, offering global observations about the draft, and highlighting any changes that bear further comment or explanation. I work as a developmental editor in the following genres:
SUBSTANTIVE EDITINGWhen I do a substantive edit, I rewrite a manuscript line by line. If you feel that your command of written expression or written English needs this kind of in-depth treatment, then this is an appropriate level of editing when all your ideas are down in writing and they are pretty much in the order you want them. At this stage of editing, I focus on the sentence and the paragraph. I keep your ideas the same, but I make everything flow from sentence to sentence, paragraph to paragraph.
LINE EDITINGA line edit is a more streamlined substantive edit. While the occasional sentence may need complete rewriting, most sentences only need some phrases or words adjusted. This level of editing is appropriate when your manuscript is as polished as you can make it yourself, but you still want help with grammar, spelling, or word choice problems that you have a hard time sorting out on your own.
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Polish
COPYEDITINGCopyediting is primarily concerned with (a) consistency across the manuscript and (b) adherence to the spelling, grammar, and formatting conventions of a particular style guide. This is the bulk of the copyeditor’s work: making sure that you spell, capitalize, and hyphenate the same words the same way each time; that titles of works, quotations, citations, headings, and footnotes are formatted consistently; that figures and tables and their captions are all styled the same way; and that the more mechanical aspects of punctuation (e.g., whether or not there is a period at the end of each bulleted list item, whether there is a comma before personal name suffixes like “Jr.” or “II”) comply with the rules of the chosen style manual.
Secondarily, some amount of line editing—dealing with the squishier issues of syntax, grammar, and word choice—often takes place as part of the copyediting process. See my editing samples for the different levels of line editing you can request as part of my copyediting services. Each copyediting project I complete comes with a customized style sheet.
Please note that what I offer is a professional two-pass copyedit. This means that, after editing your manuscript, I make a second pass over it to make sure that all my edits are consistent, that any queries (i.e., questions/comments addressed to you, the author) I made at the beginning are still relevant by the end, and that no errors have been accidentally introduced in the copyediting process. A cleanup edit is also available as part of the copyediting process if you are interested. A cleanup edit is a shorter "cleanup" pass over the manuscript that takes place after you have resolved any issues and approved my edits from the initial copyedit. It is intended to reconcile any changes or make any further edits that might be necessary after your revisions. It is a separate pass from the two-pass copyedit described above, which is a standard part of the initial copyedit. 
PROOFREADINGProofreading is the last text check before the material is published or released. It is intended to correct only extremely minor technical errors—things like the occasional typo, capitalization inconsistency, incorrectly spelled name, extra or missing space, strange word break at the end of a line, etc. It is usually assumed that any project ready for proofreading has already been copyedited. In formal publishing contexts, proofreading takes place on professional printer's proofs.
I offer proofreading services in any genre and format, including books, articles, marketing and publicity copy, and dissertations. If your manuscript has never been edited, the service you are looking for may be copyediting (see above). 
THESIS & DISSERTATION FORMATTINGBefore you formally submit your dissertation or master's thesis for your degree, you will likely need to format your manuscript according to your university's guidelines. This is essentially a process of self-publication according to the university's house style. My formatting services will help you format your manuscript—including front matter, back matter, figures, tables, footnotes, and anything else whose conformity is required—according to your university's rulebook and any other style manual you may be using.
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Peripherals & Legalities
PERMISSIONS EDITINGTracking down copyright holders and procuring permissions can be a stressful and time-consuming process, especially when you wish you could be focusing on your writing instead. As a permissions editor, I would take care of the entire permissions process, from customizing permissions letters and contacting copyright holders to negotiating permission fees and managing permissions records for your files. All you have to do is be ready to pay the copyright holders’ permissions fees at the end! Let me know your permissions budget and we can get started.
IMAGE RESEARCHNeed to track down publishable-quality images for your book that are also available for licensing? Let me help you with the detective work! As a former research librarian, I know the best ways to discover licensable images in all kinds of topics, and I can devise research strategies for esoteric materials. Tell me what kinds of images you are looking for and I can help you find them.
OTHER RESEARCH SUPPORTA book may need all kinds of extra research work. Some of it may be fairly rote, such as compiling information for a handy reference in the appendix; others might be more unusual and specific, such as needing a trained researcher to go through boxes of archival records looking for material pertinent to your topic. I am a thorough and detail-oriented researcher, trained in both digital and archival research, who can help you navigate any material and collect the information you are interested in.
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Author Development
ARGUMENT COACHINGThis is an ongoing coaching relationship where I work on argument development with academic authors who are experiencing problems with argument structure in a manuscript, wanting skilled feedback on an especially tricky or complex argument structure, or looking for ways to make their argument in a manuscript more cogent or persuasive. Issues I frequently collaborate with writers on are theoretical, methodological, analytical, and narrative. Among the things I assist with are
I offer argument coaching in the academic humanities and social sciences on manuscripts ranging from journal articles to full-length books. I especially enjoy dealing with the difficulties of interdisciplinary communication, and welcome any writers who may be looking for high-level communication advice in tackling an interdisciplinary project. I typically hold coaching sessions over Zoom videoconferencing. To inquire about argument coaching, please contact me for a free 45-minute consultation. I want to understand your needs and give us the opportunity to see whether we would be a good fit for each other. |