LOUISE O'DONALD is a freelance editor and has more than 25 years of experience working with technical and business publications: journals, magazines, manuals, theses, dissertations, policies and procedures, press releases, proposals, reports, and white papers. She has specialized documentation experience in the computer and engineering field, and has worked for a number of computer peripherals and systems manufacturers and for a military defense contractor.

Louise has in-depth experience with copyediting, developmental editing, substantive editing, and proofreading. She has expertise in adjusting the level of edit according to client needs, working closely with authors to retain voice and technical accuracy. Louise possesses particular skill in querying authors and subject matter experts from many countries on widely varied technical subjects, and in applying US English idiom. Her specialties are APA and Chicago Manual of Style.

Scope: Copy Editing, Rewriting, Proofreading, Substantive / Developmental Editing, Stylistic and Content Revision, MS Word.
Internal Business Documents: Corporate Communications, Policies and Procedures Manuals, Training Manuals.
Business Solicitation Documents: Business Proposals, Resume Writing.
Publicity & Public Relations Materials: Press Releases, Promotional Writing, Executive Bios, Company Fact Sheets, Web Site Content, Newsletters, Journal Articles.
Advertising / Marketing: Applications Notes, Data Sheets.
Technical Documents: Hardware Manuals / Software Manuals, Reference Guides, Template and Form Design, Reports.

Feedback

"I like very much the way you have edited my article. I remember how I was fighting with many of the sentences and you have found such elegant solutions — thanks.” — Prof. Z. Stachniak, Dept. of Computer Science, York University, Canada

“Just wanted to let you know how pleased we are and what a great job you did editing. The issue is one we can distribute to our founders and other supporters with much pride.” — L. Johnson, President, Software History Center

“Just wanted to thank you again for your patient editing effort in making the manuscript the very best it could be—and for writing such a succinct abstract. It’s very hard to summarize twenty-odd pages in four sentences, but you succeeded beautifully.” —Dr. P. Frana, Charles Babbage Institute, Minneapolis, Minn.

"You have done a very good job on a topic and era which must be unfamiliar. Thank you very much." — Dr. M. Croarken, Visiting Research Fellow, University of Warwick

"Knowing that you always devote such attention to detail is sometimes the saving grace in doing my job! Thanks so much for your careful work." — J. Prow, Managing Editor, Computer magazine

"Having worked on a number of other collaborative publishing ventures I found your comments to be the most pointed and ultimately helpful in editing my own article as well as in working with the authors of the other articles in the double issue. That in itself is a very unique skill but combined with the ability to address details in such a variety of works on topics I suspect you may have little direct knowledge or experience of is all the more impressive." — R. Graham, Head, Library Systems, Johns Hopkins University, Md.

"What a great job you did on editing the special issue — it looks great! It's a glorious feeling to see the results in print and so well presented. It was very easy to work with you, and I look forward to working with you in the future." — B. Grad, Software History Center

"Louise did a superb job editing my manuscript, and she's a pleasure to work with." — M. Goetz, Goetz Associates, N.J.

"Thanks so much for your assistance in making this a much-improved article." — Prof. S. Becker, Computer Information Systems, Northern Arizona University

"Thanks so much -- you have been an incredible help with this article!!" — Dr. E. Vote, Brown University, R.I.

“Thank you very much for the final edition. I appreciate your excellent work.” — Prof. T. Ikedo, Computer Information Sciences, Hosei University, Japan

From the Acknowledgments paragraph of “mSTAR: Enabling Collaborative Applications on the Internet” article by P. Parnes, K. Synnes, and D. Schefström

"We thank all those who reviewed this article, especially the anonymous reviewers, as well as Louise O’Donald, who edited it."

From the Acknowledgments in their book, The Anatomy of a High Performance Microprocessor: A Systems Perspective by B. Shriver and B. Smith

"We would like to thank Louise, the copy-editor … for … improving the readability of the manuscript."