My first introduction to academic publishing came through a summer internship in the manuscript editorial department at the Yale University Press. Several years later, I re-entered the publishing profession as the copy editor of the American Journal of Sociology at the University of Chicago Press. My initial connection to the press came through a course on manuscript editing taken at the University of Chicago Graham School.
While at AJS, I used my time outside the office to take on extra copyediting work for another UCP journal, Classical Philology, to edit as a freelancer for a variety of individual clients, and to take further editing courses at the Graham School. When the volume of freelance work available to me grew to full-time proportions, I decided to strike out on my own and have since added a number of different types of clients and editing experiences to my resume.
As an undergraduate I studied classics, with a focus on Latin. Since an early age, I’ve also studied a variety of modern languages, from Russian to the Romance languages to German, all of which strengthen my understanding of grammar and broaden my vocabulary, my cultural references, and my ability to edit work that contains text in other languages. I am currently studying German at the intermediate level.
When not editing, I like to spend my time reading, baking and cooking, exploring Washington DC and other cities, keeping my cat happy, and trying not to kill my houseplants.
My editing philosophy
My approach to editing is shaped by three major forces. The first is my experience in working for publishers, primarily the University of Chicago Press, which has given me an understanding of what sorts of linguistic, graphical, and technical issues are important to an academic publisher and are considered in the profession to be important to readers. The second is my exposure to the advice and thoughts of working editors, linguists, grammarians, and usage experts, through reference works such as Merriam Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage, Carol Fisher Saller’s excellent book The Subversive Copyeditor, and blogs such as Language Log. The third force that shapes my approach to editing is my personal experience as a reader, of literature, news, academic works, the internet, business publications, government publications, and other materials.
As a result of these influences, my primary goal in editing is to make the content work—to make it convey its ideas without confusing, distracting, irritating, or otherwise repelling the intended audience. This generally means adhering to a consistent style of spelling and to the widely accepted norms of contemporary American English grammar, and for works that have been accepted by a publisher, it usually also means adhering to that publisher’s style conventions. Within those parameters, however, I try not to be dogmatic about imposing my own or any other individual’s preferred mode of expression, and I try to avoid following rules that exist for their own sake rather than for the sake of improving communication. I believe that the way language is actually used, in the aggregate, is the best guide for how it should be used. Therefore, I am more likely to cite internet search results as evidence of how to use a given term than I am to cite Strunk and White. In short, I am a descriptivist rather than a prescriptivist.