I’ve been an editor for about fifteen years, working on a range of materials but predominantly research reports, research papers, corporate communications materials, website material and journal paper submissions. For six of those years I was the Publications Officer at Ninti One, working on research reports for the Desert Knowledge CRC and other areas of Ninti One’s work. These reports ranged from small working papers of 5-6 pages to final research results of up to 360 pages.

Research is typically conducted with teams of people from all over Australia, so this work often required liaising with authors over telephone or email with little face-to-face contact. I also provided training by telephone in MS Word, Adobe InDesign and EndNote.

Like all editors, I’ve always loved words and language. In 1992, I inherited a small collection of books from my grandparents’ estate. Among them was Fowler’s A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, the 1926 first edition. As my career wound its way through adult education, teaching linguistics to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the Northern Territory, freelance and corporate editing, this book has stayed with me, a solid resource to decide between ‘continuous’ and ‘continual’, to support a sentence-final preposition and to decipher ‘Salique’. I’ve never lost my enthusiasm for words, my love of books or my delight at a phrase well-turned.