Bourchier has been copy-editing and proof-reading this prestigious publication for three years. Working with the editor, Professor Ron Johnston, we send pdf proofs to the memoir authors, collate corrections and have the final memoirs posted online – and at the end of the year collect all the memoirs together to produce a printed volume. The memoirs provide a fascinating record of the working lives of distinguished Fellows of the Academy, covering a wide range of disciplines and life stories.
Our work on this manuscript was a case of serendipity: Elizabeth and David had just purchased a copy of the French Orientalist Barthélemy d’Herbelot’s Bibliothèque orientale (1697) when OUP asked us to copy-edit Nicholas Dew’s manuscript, which discussed this book in the context of printing in seventeenth-century France.
Here is an example of the many manuscripts we receive from the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient in Berlin – these may be journal articles, book chapters, publishing proposals, blogs or personal statements. In copy-editing we focus both on standard improvements (to grammar, spelling, punctuation) and enhancements (idiom, clarity, cogency of arguments, literary style, and so on).
The key to all we do is our commitment to clear and effective communication, ensuring that the published work fits your purpose.
Editing can mean many things. Language editing typically involves looking behind the words of a text, for example by a non-native English speaker, and recasting them. This can mean questioning the sense or the sequence of content with an author. It often means suggesting alternative words, idioms, phrases, tenses.
Such editing calls for sensitivity to subject matter and/or to cultural nuance. But we also, as a matter of course, attend to copyediting – correcting grammar, spelling and punctuation, checking that references are complete and appropriately styled, imposing stylistic consistency across the text.
Whatever level of editing you require, we can deliver.