My Philosophy
My practices as an editor are never to interfere with my writer’s style, tone, and meaning, but rather to draw out and magnify the brilliance of my writer’s discourse. I became an editor so that all those who love the written word as I do, can relish and enjoy it without distractions from errors in punctuation, grammar, and syntax. I enjoy the challenge of taking an early manuscript and refining it into a product that can be shared with all.
While I am versatile to work with any text, I hope to someday work with fiction novels. My approach to editing differs based on the genre I am editing for. With fiction, I will make ample allowance and effort not to disturb the idiosyncrasies of my writer’s style. With non-fiction, I edit for tone and clarity such that it is appropriate for the intended audience. Often, my revisions will extend to the rhetorical and ethical implications of my writer’s work such that grammar and syntax don’t disturb the writer’s intended meaning. My focus on rhetorical and ethical nuances includes ensuring the manuscript is appropriate for the house style of the publishing company.
“Let the reader find that he cannot afford to omit any line of your writing because you have omitted every word that he can spare.”
Concise
Precise
Versatile
My editing style is concise. I edit to revise anything that might be superfluous. In doing so, my manuscripts become easier for the audience to read, acquire information from, and become immersed in the text. My job is to make invisible any barriers that might prevent a reader from entering this immersive state.
My editing style is precise. If there is a better word to encompass a complex thought, I will be sure to find it. If there are multiple authors to a text, I will polish the text such that it reads as if there is only one. I edit for the correctness of a manuscript and use any resource at my disposal to verify factual statements.
My editing style is versatile. While I can appreciate the genre of discourse and become intimate with its conventions, I am quite capable of challenging said genre convention. Writing styles and genres of writing are constantly changing and being made. My editing style similarly grows and adapts to these new styles. To familiarize myself with the changing genres, I often read a variety of texts.
Edited Works
Participatory Memory Spaces
By Dr. Liza Potts
Line Editor
As a line editor for the Wide Research Center at Michigan State University, my first editing project was Participatory Memory: Fandom Experience Across Space and Time by Dr. Liza Potts, Melissa Beattie, Emily Dallaire, Katie Grimes, and Kelly Turner. Participatory Memory Spaces is a digital, academic book studying participatory experiences in spaces significant to fans of a fandom. This book examines fandom experience and engagement for Princess Diana, Harry Potter, and Torchwood.
The audience for this research was very diverse, and the researchers who contributed to writing this book also had varying degrees of vocabulary and purpose. As the line editor, I worked to ensure the voice of the text was uniform and that the research was coherent for its diverse audience.
Copy Editor
sherlockian.net is a digital archive dedicated to all things and everything about the Great Detective. Whether you are a fan of the Arthur Conan Doyle stories, BBC Sherlock, the Robert Downy film version, or any other retelling, this archive tracks all articles and media about the Great Detective.
The 60 Stories - An Introduction by the Hounds articles are annotations of the original 60 Arthur Conan Doyle Sherlock short stories. These annotations were written by a Sherlockian Scion known as the Hounds of the Internet. Many of these annotations were written in the late 1990s. The brand and voice of sherlockian.net are different from the Hounds’ annotations. My task as a copy editor was to update outdated word-usage, edit for copy, and troubleshoot formatting errors in WordPress.
sherlockian.net
The 60 Stories -An Introduction by the Hounds
Prose & Poetry Editor
When I was a student editor for The Offbeat Literary Journal, I edited several short fiction, creative non-fiction, and poetry pieces. Each piece went through an extensive round of developmental editing, line-editing, and finally copy. After corresponding with authors and resolving any editorial changes, I typeset each submission according to the house style in InDesign and contributed to proofing the final issue. The examples below show my work in final layout.
Click on the covers to read the full issue!
