Contact
For casual inquiries, concerns or comments, please email from below. For a specific manuscript you may wish to request a Cost Estimate.
I will contact you promptly on receipt of your transmission, with the exception of Sundays.
Absences
Absences will be notified well in advance and will have no effect on work in progress.
Content at risk
Korean preschooler revising his alphabet.
Any draft written in a foreign language, be it a cutting-edge research paper, a website catering to foreigners or assembly instructions for a robot toy, will have impact in terms of grammar, clarity and content. If readers feel that their spontaneous expectations in grammar and clarity are not satisfied, or are frustrated, they will be wary of the work’s content and the author’s sincerity. Fortunately, failing the quality test in terms of poor expression is a risk that can be altogether avoided by ensuring careful revision.
Native speakers of Japanese or Chinese are likely to encounter special difficulties when writing in their second language, English. For example, Japanese sentences allow a flexible word order and may leave the subject unspecified, whereas in Chinese and English the word order is fixed, though valid but different meanings may result in Chinese with changed word order. Only in English must the subject almost always be clearly identified. Some languages employ rather different syntactic structures and make unlike demands in terms of explicitness. This is felt nowhere as acutely as when converting Japanese thoughts, or text, into an English manuscript.
Writers putting their thoughts down in a language other than their mother tongue will have to rely on their skills in that language but may also seek assistance in having grammar and clarity independently verified. By reviewing corrections and weighing suggestions made to them, authors will be able to add to the quality of their argument, raise their self-confidence, and increment their chances for international recognition and reward.