Friday, December 30, 2016

Academic editing for those whose first language is NOT English (or, for that matter, for anyone else)


Dear International Students, Faculty, and Scholars:

I edit documents for students, faculty, and scholars whose first language is not English. My goal is to make your document read like it was written by a native English speaker. Most of my clients have been from China, Taiwan, Korea, India, and Latin America, but I will work on documents for clients of any nationality. I edit statements you write to apply for grad school and for faculty positions, papers you intend to submit for publication to an English journal, business reports, letters, white papers, dissertation chapters, job applications, statements of purpose, and research proposals. 

I edit documents in all fields. I have edited papers in engineering, nanofabrication, statistics, plant pathology, city and regional planning, food science, history, plant genetics, biotechnology, plant breeding, wildlife biology, biomedicine, near eastern studies, theatre arts, psychology, and more. Clients simply send me their document (tag1@cornell.edu) as an email attachment, I edit it in MS Word using Track Changes, and I return the document, usually within 48 hours.

Most documents take less than three hours of editing to complete, unless they are unusually long. My clients pay me by sending me a check or depositing money in my PayPal account, which is very simple to do. Also, if you want to send me your document, I can provide an estimate of how much it will cost and how long it should take me to complete the job. As I edit, I also suggest ways to improve your writing in English generally. If desired, I can provide references from recent clients.

I am currently Professor Emeritus from Cornell University.  I have published dozens of papers in refereed journals over the past 40 years, and I served as Associate Editor for the journal Ecological Applications for three years. I taught university courses for 30 years, and I conducted ecological research throughout the U.S. and in Costa Rica. I lived in Korea and Costa Rica for one year each and, recently, I have been visiting Taiwan to teach short courses on conservation biology at National Taiwan University.

All correspondence between the author and me, including the contents of any document, is kept strictly confidential. So if you think this is valuable, please pass the word along.

My charges for this service: individuals-$50 per hour; institutions-$75 per hour.  When I return your document, I inform you how much the bill is and I can provide an invoice if desirable.  I also have an express service.  For $75 per hour, I will guarantee that I return your document within 24 hours of receiving it.