Illustration of the letter B decorated with flowers by two girls

Bri’s Blog: Skillset

Writing and Editing

I studied creative writing in undergrad, in particular poetry, so I’m very interested in how we use language to communicate, and I’m always thinking about whether there are better ways to say what we want to say. I’ve been an editor for more than 13 years, and I have a strong attention to detail and am very good at editing for consistency and clarity. The majority of my professional editing has been in science and medicine, but I’ve also edited PhD dissertations, humanities journal articles, creative writing, and even resumes and cover letters. I am very skilled at editing for a particular audience. Currently I edit content for a website, so I’ve learned how to edit not just for content but also with user experience in mind. I am familiar with ADA accessibility guidelines, so I also edit web content with those in mind. In terms of style, I’m most familiar with the Chicago Manual of Style and the AMA Manual of Style (American Medical Association), but I am also familiar with AP and MLA styles. In my current job as a copy chief, I’ve even written a 100+ page style guide for my communications and marketing office.

Publishing and Time/Project Management

I have worked for many publications, starting with the school newspaper in high school, the art and creative writing journal at my college, and multiple medical journals. I am great at setting deadlines and meeting them, and I can manage multiple competing deadlines. I am very communicative with my collaborators and clients, and I’m great at crafting messages and questions to ensure I get the information I need so we all stay on task. I’ve managed small teams of in-house and freelance editors.

Skills I Want to Develop

I’ve been introduced and dabbled with the command line and Python, and I very much want to develop these skills further. I have a particular interest in mapping and am also very eager to learn more about different mapping tools. In my job I work closely with the team of producers in charge of our content management system (CMS), but at the same time my role is kept very much separate from it, and I’m very interested in learning more about different CMSs. I have a basic working knowledge of XML as during my time in medical publishing we moved toward digital publishing workflows, but it’s been a few years since I worked very closely with it.

Illustration of the letter B decorated with flowers by two girls
“Letter B” by Double–M is licensed under CC BY 2.0 (source: https://search.creativecommons.org/photos/a7d4f448-b621-422c-8ad1-101147d18923)

 

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