My name is Teddy Turner, a professional editor dedicated to editing books with care.
My professional background
My copyediting credentials derive from my coursework, training, and experience. I have copyediting certificate from UC San Diego Extended Studies. I’m also an alum of the Denver Publishing Institute. Most importantly, I’ve been copyediting and proofreading for book publishers since 2022.
I’m also a former trainee of the Sourcebooks BIPOC Editorial Training Program. In fact, this led to Sourcebooks becoming one of my first publishing clients alongside Haymarket Books.
Not all of my experience is editorial though. One formative job: serving a year through AmeriCorps during the beginning of the pandemic. During the 2020-21 school year, I served as an AmeriCorps fellow at Saga Education as a classroom math tutor.
As a fellow, I gave individual and small-group algebra lessons to 9th graders in the Chicago Publish School system. Because of the onset of COVID-19, I worked the entire year remotely. I not only underwent a crash course in remote work but also honed integral interpersonal skills in the midst of societal trauma.
My editing philosophy
Above all, my guiding principle in editing is to edit with care.
Within this editing philosophy, I think of care in two respects: care for the rules, and care for the work.
Care for the rules
In caring for rules, I strive to uphold the standards of spelling, grammar, and style. Rules interest me intellectually. Like most (all?) editors, I’m a nerd with language, and I’m entranced by the complexities of writing that most readers, and sometimes a writer, take for granted. My love of learning fuels my knowledge base for when I’m checking the language and content of a manuscript.
I also take great interest in the four Cs of copyediting: clarity, coherence, consistency, and correctness. These priorities require both a knowledge of what the rules are and how to apply them. It’s one thing to know when to use a comma, but it’s another to apply that knowledge. That application requires considering the many cases and exceptions.
Care for the work
At the same time, I also edit with a care of the work. To elaborate, “work” comprises the book (or other written work), the author, the publisher, and the reader. Editing rules exist in service of the writing, not for rules’ sake.
Standards lead to better writing more often than not, yet these very standards are ever-changing. Every piece of writing contributes toward reiterating or reshaping language. Authors are always creating and reinforcing new words and definitions, and they may even “break” rules that are insufficient or even harmful to create better ways of writing.
I also care deeply about the ethics of writing. I seek not to impose upon an author’s words but to help the author in publishing the best version of those words. My duties also require supporting the author and publisher in doing no harm to the reader. Even in the lightest levels of editing, I consider my commitment to conscious writing.
In this light, I pledge to recognize the great power of an editor and to uphold the great responsibility of editing.
At the intersection of these two cares, I locate my vocation.
If my editing philosophy is what you’re looking for in an editor, I invite you to contact me today so that we can talk about your next project.
More on my background
For my undergraduate education, I obtained a bachelor of arts degree from Knox College, located in Galesburg, Illinois. My major was in creative writing with two minors, on in psychology and one in gender & women’s studies. If Knox would have allowed it, I might’ve gotten a third minor.
At Knox, I served as a personal relations manager for their award-winning literary journal, Catch. By graduation, I’d been published in all three literary publications (Catch, Quiver, and Cellar Door). I also participated in other extracurriculars like running on Knox’s cross-country team, serving as recorder for the college’s chapter of Sigma Nu, hosting a radio show at WVKC, and attending meetings for Tea Club.
For a semester, I traveled overseas in Copenhagen, Denmark, through the study-abroad program DIS. I also did a summer internship at River Styx, a long-running literary magazine in St. Louis, Missouri.
Even before Knox, I underwent many experiences formative to my editing. For instance, I was a student of St. Louis’s poet laureate, an attendee of the Kenyon Review’s Young Writers Workshop, and a section editor at my high school’s newspaper. And of course, I was an avid reader and writer.
Every experience in my life has led to where I am now.