Tie Jojima

Project Background

Tie Jojima is an art historian whose research and dissertation focus on performance art, technology, and pornography in the 1970s and 1980s, as well as contemporary Asian diasporic art practices in Latin America. She was concerned that the draft of her dissertation contained word repetition, grammar issues, and irregular and passive sentence constructions because she is a multilingual author whose primary language is not English.

I have been asking Flatpage for editorial help for almost all writing I do for institutional publications. These include short and long writing projects, and of course, my own dissertation. I chose to work with Flatpage because I am a non-native English speaker and I want to make sure my texts are polished.

Tie Jojima

The author sought out the help of a copyeditor who could work with her chapter by chapter as she prepared to submit the dissertation to ensure an error-free draft for her advisor’s review. This way, the advisor could focus solely on the content of her writing rather than getting distracted by errors in the copy.

The Collaboration

The author’s research—and, as a result, writing process—was a bit nonsequential. When she approached Flatpage to edit her dissertation in late 2022, she had just completed drafting chapter 3. The remaining three of the four chapters were completed several months later. She wanted to work with a team who could help her keep track of style issues and on whom she could rely when she returned for further edits.

Copyediting was an ideal fit for this author because her main concerns were grammatical issues and the application of a style guide. Flatpage’s editor could help her address preposition errors, make the punctuation consistent, and reformat the citations according to the Chicago Manual of Style. Additionally, they could address minor issues with sentence-to-sentence flow and use of passive voice.

The editorial process seems mostly mechanical, but it oftentimes helps me clarify and organize ideas.

Further, because the editor used a style sheet during their process, the editorial decisions made in chapter 3 could be implemented across the entire manuscript once it was completed. Therefore, even though the first editor wasn’t available to take on the final chapters when they were submitted, another Flatpage team member could step in without adding any inconsistencies between the parts.

The Outcome

With the dissertation free of grammatical and spelling errors, the author was able to submit it to her advisor on time. She successfully defended her dissertation in 2024.

Flatpage always exceeds my expectations. All editors I have worked with so far have been excellent. I appreciate how reliable, professional, and quick Flatpage has been throughout these years.