Leslie Saffrey

As a Certified Professional Editor, I provide skilled editing at any stage of creating organized and polished documents for print or Web: developing the framework and outline; guiding the writing; editing for eloquent, clear, correct, and concise text; and proofing the final layout, text, and graphics.  

I’m an expert in taming complex books and reports: my speciality is academic, scholarly, or technical material full of figures, tables, charts, maps, photos, and boxed features. I take particular delight in ensuring that citations and references are complete and correct.

I work in a wide range of subjects. Many of my textbook projects are in social sciences and humanities: sociology, English language and composition, English language learning and teaching (ELT), Canadian government, history, philosophy, and food studies. I’ve also worked on business, geography, health care, and environmental studies texts. Also, I served as the copyeditor for two issues of an academic journal. As a part-time editorial consultant for the Independent Evaluation Group of the World Bank, I copyedit reports on international development projects. My degree is in linguistics; as well, I have a diploma and work experience in horticulture and a keen interest in urban agriculture and community gardening, especially in relation to sustainability.

I’ve been a full-time freelance editor since 2009. I began my editing career as a production editor with Oxford University Press Canada in 2006, while working toward the Certificate in Publishing at Ryerson University (now Toronto Metropolitan University), which I completed in 2008. Earlier, I was a technical writer, working mainly on software documentation and instruction manuals.