All seven services, or any one of them

I design, typeset and make up pages for all types of material, from brochures to coffee-table books to maths and science textbooks.

Specialised typesetting

I am proficient and experienced in high-end work in specialised subjects for the academic and professional markets, including the physical sciences, mathematics, law (heavily footnoted books and loose-leaf revision services) and accounting.

Tables

Many typesetters see tabular matter as bad news, to be avoided. I consider it one of my strong points. I create distinctive tables, with elegant and consistent use of rules, shading and colour, so that their content is clear at a glance.

Database publishing

I set up a ‘recipe’ that extracts, sorts and formats data from a database according to the specifications laid down. Once the recipe has been fine-tuned with specimen data, producing formatted pages is a matter of ‘hitting the button’ whenever the data changes, as it does in price lists and catalogues.

Numbering and cross-referencing

In books with numbered headings, tables and figures, manual numbering leads to difficulties and errors, especially when numbered items are added, deleted or moved. I replace manual numbering with counters that update automatically.

Cross-references are linked to the items they refer to, even in another chapter or another book such as a teacher’s guide, so they always show the current table and page numbers. When the document is adapted for digital use, these links become hyperlinks.

Table of contents

I set up the table of contents by specifying what to include: which levels of headings, tables and figures. The entries and page references are then generated from the text itself, which eliminates errors in page references and discrepancies between the contents and the text. If the pagination changes, or material is added, deleted or moved, the table of contents follows.

Digital formats

Whatever I do for print, I can also do for digital media. I adapt and convert page make-up for distribution as industry-standard ebooks, as HTML for the web, or as PDF.

Your files and mine

If a client requires the work to be done in a particular application, I can comply. I can work with documents from virtually any word-processing application, as well as with data from databases and spreadsheets.

Books are not posters, leaflets or magazines, and their design should reflect this. I design books to be suitable to the material and the readership, editorially relevant, readable, typographically sound, consistent and aesthetically pleasing.

Cover design

My capabilities extend beyond the contents of the book to the design, artwork, typography and make-up of the cover. I take it from your brief, submit concepts and colour proofs and, on approval, supply press-ready material with everything in place, right down to the barcode.

Diagrams

I draw diagrams, graphs and maps from briefs supplied by authors, and incorporate them in the make-up.

Illustrations

I work closely with freelance artists in various fields of illustration, from children’s books to medical illustration.

Scanning and retouching

I scan and retouch artwork and photographs in-house.

Photography

I am an experienced photographer and can supply quality photographs according to your brief, budget and deadline.

I have many years’ experience in editing books for publication in English and in Afrikaans: first as a full-time editor for a major publisher, and later as a freelancer.

In that time I have edited all types of texts, from primary school to postgraduate; from literature to maths to law.

Member of the Professional Editors’ Guild.

The index is ‘a vital component of the work, and one that directly affects the text’s usefulness for the reader’.

Potential readers and buyers commonly evaluate a book by scanning the index for topics of particular interest to them, so the quality of the index can be significant in the buying decision.

I compile indexes that are accurate, comprehensive, logical and consistent, providing clear and easy access to the contents of a book. My procedure depends on whether I start with a book that is already typeset, or with the open files of a book that I am setting.

Indexing the finished book

This is the method most commonly required. Leading professional indexing software lets me concentrate on the informational and logical aspects rather than the mechanical ones, which ensures efficiency, accuracy and consistency within the limited time usually available for indexing.

Indexing in the page make-up

Index entries are inserted as non-printing markers in the text of the document, at the places they refer to. The software then collects the text of all the markers with the numbers of the pages on which they occur, removes duplicates, alphabetises them and compiles the index with up-to-date page numbers. Should the pagination change, the index is simply regenerated.

This has distinct advantages.

• Savings in production time. Indexing doesn’t have to wait until pagination is final. Markers can be inserted at any stage, so there is no delay at the final stages of production.
• Painless changes. Changes to the text, such as proof amendments or a new edition, do not make the index inaccurate or obsolete. If a section is deleted, its markers go with it. If material is added, markers are inserted for the new material only, and all numbering is updated correctly.
• Accuracy. The indexer types only the text of the entry and is not concerned with page numbers at all. This eliminates a considerable source of human error.
• Hyperlinks. Index entries and cross-references are hyperlinked to the text. If the document is converted for digital use, the reader can click on an entry to jump straight to the relevant point.

Member of the Association of Southern African Indexers and Bibliographers.

I translate from Afrikaans to English, and vice versa: general as well as technical texts.

I have translated for publication a great variety of material, from a few paragraphs of advertising copy to long, multivolume works on technical subjects such as nursing science and economics.

Member of the South African Translators’ Institute.

Publishers’ production staff deal with large volumes of work and an avalanche of paper and suppliers.

I am an experienced production manager, and worked for years as editorial and production manager of a leading publisher of professional and educational books.

I can handle the entire job myself, which significantly reduces the shuttling of material and the coming and going of people for briefing and reporting. When parts of the production process are carried out by other suppliers, I am happy to control and manage the traffic, sort out queries and deal with the day-to-day issues of the project. I submit consolidated weekly progress reports to the client.