Lap Cat Editing helps businesses, organizations, and authors refine their writing to achieve their goals.
Whether you’re drafting content for your website, developing a marketing brochure, preparing an annual report, or writing your first novel, you’ve got a goal in mind. You’ve got an audience to reach. A message to get across. A story to tell. And, of course, you've got constraints. Word limits, style guides, genre conventions, formatting…
Lap Cat Editing will help you pull it all together, making sure that your words support your message and that your message resonates with your intended audience.
Editing and writing services
Lap Cat Editing offers stylistic editing, copy editing, and proofreading services for businesses, non-profit organizations, government, and self-published authors.
No time to pull together that first draft? We can help with that too.
What to expect
Hi! I'm Emma, the writer and editor behind Lap Cat Editing.
I bring to the table over 20 years of experience writing for government and my own small business, along with professional training as an editor and a lifelong interest in language.
As you consider working with me, there are a few things you should know:
- Relationships are important to me, and I enjoy getting to know my clients. It helps me better understand you and your needs. Sometimes this means taking time to talk about more than just your project.
- I love language—obscure grammar rules, the evolution of words, all of it. I especially enjoy exploring the nuances in meaning that underlie different ways of saying things. It may feel like I’m nitpicking sometimes. But in the end, it’s all about the audience and how they will receive the text.
- I have developed many types of documents for many different audiences. I enjoy working on topics that I am familiar with, but I also welcome the opportunity to learn something new. Just because I haven’t done a project like yours before doesn’t mean I can’t.
- I always look for the story—even in professional writing. One of my favourite challenges is distilling complex topics into storylines that non-expert audiences can follow. I also love a good fiction project. To me, a good story is as delicious as chocolate.
- I am thorough and thoughtful in my work, but I am not particularly fast. It takes time for ideas and connections to form, or to figure out what’s not working and how to fix it. This doesn’t mean I won’t respect your deadlines. But it does mean that if you ask if I can edit a 400-page report by next week, my answer is probably no.
- I am fluently bilingual in English and French. I am not a translator, but I can help confirm that translations are accurate and that they capture the meaning and tone of the original text. Si vous êtes francophone, ce sera un plaisir de communiquer avec vous en français.
Want to know more?
Read about my background as a writer and editor.
What clients say...
"Emma is a fastidious editor and a delight to work with. To say she goes through a document with a fine-toothed comb is an understatement. I consider myself a pretty meticulous writer: I've been teaching writing for 25 years, I've ghostwritten exercises for a best-selling grammar textbook, and I've developed and taught grammar courses to professionals. Yet Emma found mechanical flaws and formatting issues that escaped my eye, and she even taught me a few things!
I'd highly recommend Emma's services to bring an extra level of polish to your documents. She's precise about
her markup, thoughtful in her comments, and punctual, a truly valuable collaborator." — Dawn Henwood, Clarity Connect
"You did an exemplary job. Neither one of us truly understood what this would take to complete. You caught so many things I had missed after my own five times through, and I would gratefully hit the accept button. You offered valuable insight, perspective, and suggestions. Always with the caveat, 'Of course, it's your book so you decide if you want to accept these changes, some of them, or none of them.' Thank you for your dedication and professionalism in this endeavour. You are a great editor, and you made this novel what I hoped it would be. Thank you." — Erik Gingles, The Nomies and the Surface Protocol