Copy Write Editorial

Copy Write Editorial
Joy McCann, chief editor

Editing, Proofreading, Fact-Checking, Copywriting
2222 Foothill Blvd., E-313 • La Canada, CA 91011
(for email, try this: place “joy.mccann” ahead of “gmail.com” and place an @ sign in between the two)

Ms. McCann has worked in publishing ever since junior high school, when she was given the task of reading galleys for the school newspaper because she caught far more typographical and grammatical errors than the other students—and more than the journalism teacher did.

In college, she majored in English Literature and specialized in women’s studies while supplementing her income by copyediting, proofreading, and fact-checking at The Psychology of Women Quarterly, whose Editor-in-Chief at that time was Professor Nancy Henley of UCLA’s Psychology Department.

In the early eighties, Ms. McCann decided she would be a better editor if she learned a bit more about the production process. She learned it twice: first by creating paste-ups, shooting half-tones, and presenting mechanicals to the printer in the 1980s—and then again in the digital realm by working closely with pre-press on four-color publications in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Ms. McCann has copyedited numerous consumer magazines. She has also held the postions of: Advertising Production Manager at L.A. Parent magazine, Assistant Managing Editor at Petersen’s Specialty Publications (both in the Outdoor and Automotive divisions), Managing Editor at Sports Afield, Production Editor at Bon Appétit, Copyeditor at Petersen’s Hunting, and Associate Editor, Bon Appétit Books. She has worked freelance for, among others, Western Interiors and Design, Ten Speed Press, InterMedia Outdoors, Outlook Amusements, Southern California Edison, and Fugu Press.

She is familiar with AP Style, Chicago Manual of Style, Words Into Type, Recipes Into Type, and the house styles of numerous publications, along with basic web coding such as the html used for stylistic purposes.

She despises writing about herself in the third person.

Writing samples, testimonials, and full production credits are available upon request.

Resources for doing it yourself would include this guide to proofreading, which is mostly sound (but do not place the copy flat on a desk and then sit upright!–you’ll kill your upper back very quickly that way!).

Here is a list of things some of us editors get a bit too stuffy and persnickety about.

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