Nitpicky: Editorial Work

I’ve done a range of editorial work for a number of organizations, from my college literary magazine to a large textbook publisher. My skills include copy editing, indexing, and proofreading, and I have used both AP and Chicago styles. I have worked primarily on academic and literary publications, but am interested in expanding to nonfiction works for a more general audience.

Pearson Custom Publishing

Pearson Custom Publishing creates custom titles for academic institutions by combining components from existing textbooks. This saves money for students and schools while also providing a more effective, targeted curriculum. I proofread custom textbooks for Pearson, ensuring that chapters were combined without error, verifying consistent formatting, and checking that additional custom materials were incorporated correctly. I proofread on paper and used traditional proofreaders’ marks.

I worked on a number of mathematics textbooks, catching mathematical errors in addition to errors in combining and formatting materials. I also proofread in multiple languages, including French and Spanish. Much of the custom work required thorough checking of tables of contents, glossaries, and indexes for changed, deleted, or new topics. This work required extensive attention to detail and a broad knowledge of many topics.

I worked on custom titles incorporating material from the Allyn and Bacon Handbook, Scott Foresman Science textbooks, Prentice Hall literature and history textbooks, and other foundational texts for elementary, high school, and college education.

Poet’s Work, Poet’s Play

As a graduate assistant at Emerson College, I created the index for Poet’s Work, Poet’s Play: Essays on the Practice and the Art. This collection of essays on poetry, edited by Daniel Tobin and Pimone Triplett, was published by the University of Michigan Press. Tom Sleigh called it “a book for anyone who wants to write better poems.”

University of Texas Press

I copy edited academic titles for the University of Texas Press, focusing primarily on index work. This involved cross-checking index references with book content, ensuring consistent indented or run-in indexes, correcting entry formatting, and more. I worked on a number of fascinating titles, including: