Skills & Services

Editing 
Copy Editing
Having lived in the UK, the US, and Canada, I have an acute sense of the various spelling, punctuation, and usage conventions followed across these countries and am comfortable working with manuscripts in all three traditions.

I have all the standard references at hand and am used to working with the major style manuals: Chicago, MLA, APA, and Oxford. I actually enjoy aligning footnotes and bibliographies with these systems of citation.

I have published in a range of genres and subject areas (see list of publications) and have a good feel for style and register. I'm good at pruning prose so that it communicates efficiently, but I also have respect for the author's own voice.

Proofreading
I have a good eye! I always proofread as part of my indexing service and my clients have been very appreciative. I am able to mark proofs up directly on the pdf file, using Bluebeam software. I have some familiarity with a number of languages (see below) and am good at spotting errors in foreign words and phrases—recently finding, for instance, errors in Malay and in hanyu pinyin.

Indexing
I do back-of-the-book indexes that are accurate, exhaustive, and accessible. I'm very good at meeting deadlines and (as specified above) will throw in proofreading at no extra charge.

Multi-authored essay collections are a specialty. I pick up on themes and concepts as they are developed by each author in turn and incorporate them into the structure of the index.

Every index is an interpretation of the book's discourse. I aim to create indexes that capture and reflect a book's thematic and informational structure. Read more about indexing.

NOTE: As of 2015, I will no longer accept  books to be published by Cambridge University Press. The embedding process required is simply too much work, and the copy of the WordEmbed program I bought to assist with the task seems to have a few glitches in it.  

Writing
I am an experienced writer, especially of educational materials. Most recently I have written a series of e-lessons on world history topics for grades 7-9 social studies curricula in U.S. schools, using Smart Notebook interactive whiteboard software.

I am the author of five Timeline graphic novels (Rubicon Publishing with Scholastic Canada and Harcourt Achieve) and four Boldprint graphic novels (Rubicon and Oxford University Press). I also wrote a grade 12 Boldprint reader, Ecocities, which has yet to be published.

Please contact me for writing samples and see my publications list for more information.   

Languages
Mandarin Chinese
Second-language proficiency in speaking, reading, and writing. Thoroughly familiar with the hanyu pinyin method of Romanization. 
 
French and Latin
Passed reading exams in graduate school.

German
Zertifikat Deutsch als Fremdsprache

Old English, Middle English, and Old Norse
Studied these languages at undergraduate and graduate levels. My doctoral thesis was on Old English semantics.