A little about Apt Words and me.
I'm Sue Littleford, and Apt Words is my business. It's me you'll be dealing with. I'm very well used to making the obscure clear, and the clunky graceful, flowing and powerful. I love nit-picking, so I'm going to find those misplaced apostrophes and grammatical anomalies. But above all, it's important that the English in your document is appropriate, both to your audience and to the subject.
I've a degree from the University of London in geography, with English literature, and I hold the Chapterhouse Certificate in copy-editing with proofreading. I'm an associate of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders.
I've been a career civil servant, and was often brought in to make central government rules clear to the public by writing information leaflets, explanatory notes and so on. I also spent many years in the private sector after my government job was outsourced. Wherever I've worked, though, I've always been the agony aunt of the written word, which included having directors hand me documents written and rewritten by several hands, wanting me to give them a single voice whilst retaining every nuance of important contractual material.
Since turning freelance as a copy editor early in 2007, I've done a lot of postgraduate textbooks, mainly in economics, politics and international relations, development, ecology and education, as well as a series of thrillers, first time authors' memoirs, masters' and doctoral theses in psychology, business, international relations and computer gaming, a set of letters from 1840s Trinidad, a couple of children's book, histories and the list goes on.
So just give me a call, or email, and we can talk about what you need copy-edited.
