about

Who: Helen Glenn Court
What: freelance editor
Why: I love it
When: since 1990, freelance since 1995
Where: Washington DC metro area
How: electronic | hard copy

A member of
Editorial Freelancers Association
Society for Scholarly Publishing
Council of Science Editors
Copyediting-L

I've been in publishing for more than fifteen years now and in that time have developed two guiding editorial principles: maintain the author's voice and focus on one task at a time. Initially I edited journals and shorter publications, but now focus almost exclusively on books, primarily nonfiction, though I enjoy fiction tremendously.

My experience ranges from an encyclopedia on New York State to a scientific journal on European wildlife, from policy publications on the former Soviet republics and China to a bilingual art catalog and a murder mystery, from research in the social sciences to an academic journal on criminology and a book on international diplomacy.

The style guide I use most often, and admittedly favor, is Chicago, but my fluency in APA is nearly as sound. Dictionary of choice is Webster's Collegiate. Here again, however, I also use Webster's Third New International and Oxford. My bookshelves are also home to a wide variety of grammar, usage guides, and style books, the pages of all of which are well turned. These include Garner's Modern American Usage, Oxford Style Manual, The Economist Style Guide, Words Into Type, and Theodore Bernstein's The Careful Writer: A Modern Guide to English Usage. The two books from which I have learned the most, however, are Joseph Williams' Style and Editor to Author, the letters of Maxwell E. Perkins.