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Happy to be back


I like to joke that that copy editing is the nerdiest part of publishing and certainly the geekiest kind of editing. So why do I do it? What do I get out of it?

Aside from being an unabashed nerd myself, I enjoy a good puzzle. I always have. Who doesn't like cross-referencing facts? Who doesn't love checking tenses and pronouns? Who doesn't enjoy sifting through line after line, hunting for errors and missteps, and verifying style rules? Okay, maybe a lot of people don't, but I do. It's a puzzle every time; examining every piece, checking the gems for flaws, mending and finessing the handiwork of others as gently but rigorously as possible...

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surut wattanamaetee
For a while, I tried other kinds of editing, but copy editing has always been the most satisfying—I get lost in it, adore it. So it's little wonder I've wandered back into it after other careers didn't pan out. I've previously considered freelancing as a copy editor (hence setting up this site in the first place), but other opportunities arose then, and I gave them a shot. But now I'm back and eager to work with anyone needing help getting their project to the finish line, to give their hard work the polish it deserves. 

I'm eager to be that palm at the end of the mind—where ideas become facts, where projects and hard work become fully realized—for writers seeking my help with mending and finessing their handiwork.


Other posts of interest

What matters most

You’ve done the hard work; now, let me help it shine! Whether it’s helping clean up flow or catching honest errors, I want to work with you to polish up your project so it can be the best it can be. But why should you pick me over other editors? Although my professional background is in journalism, my double major in English and Philosophy left me well suited to various fields and genres. English deepened my love and appreciation for the literary and well written, while Philosophy imparted a robust (if, to many, surprising) interest in well-articulated concepts and rigorous critical thinking. I also have a mind for both the creative and the technical: On the one hand, I pride myself on finding good turns of phrase, enjoy creative problem solving, and always love a good story; on the other hand, I aim for precision and concision and understand science, statistics, and so on better than many. I also don’t just edit “by ear”—that is, editing based only on how grammar sounds. (It...

I can't use my favorite word!

As an avowed word nerd, I have many beloved words, but there's one I'm too scared to use: myriad. I distinctly recall a course instructor saying that using it as a noun, as in “a myriad of bananas” or even pluralized as “myriads,” is just plain wrong—the word is an adjective, after all!  However, years later, I know that’s not the case; the noun form is fine to use as well. But she isn’t alone in this error, or her judgment of it. As Merriam-Webster explains (italics theirs; bolding my own): “Recent criticism of the use of myriad as a noun, both in the plural form myriads and in the phrase a myriad of , seems to reflect a mistaken belief that the word was originally and is still properly only an adjective. As the entries here show, however, the noun is in fact the older form, dating to the 16th century. The noun myriad has appeared in the works of such writers as Milton (plural myriads ) and Thoreau ( a myriad of ), and it continues to occur frequently in reputable English. T...