Hi. I’m Aliyah Boucher, and I am a copyeditor who is passionate about syntax, idiom, and communication. My current work is mostly focused on videogame text, which I believe is underserved by editors, but I work on a wide range of copy.
Elevating videogame text
Even as the videogame industry sees a groundswell of enthusiasm for text- and narrative-based games across a wide range of genres, the editing of game text continues to languish. Without editors, the quality of this writing as a whole will always be bottlenecked: brilliant characterization buried in grammatical inaccuracies, innovative branching plots overshadowed by a lackluster overall game polish.
I want to help the technical side of game writing match the excellence of its creative side. I want to play a small part in elevating the quality of games as this medium enters a new phase and continues to discover what it will become next. Having clean and accurate text encourages players to engage with the words and worlds of the games they play, and I work with developers as well as with publishers to help games achieve this goal.
Editing videogame text comes with a host of complications— complications which I’m very enthusiastic about exploring and understanding deeply. You can read about some of my thoughts on the unique nature of this textual medium by going here.
Professional copy for non-professionalized industries
I also edit conventional and especially non-conventional text more broadly, including recipe blogs, YouTube essay scripts, and web and ad copy for small businesses. I believe that texts such as these ones— texts written by people whose primary skills and expertise probably lie elsewhere—deserve to reach the same standards as traditional forms of media or big companies with big marketing budgets, and copyediting is a comparatively affordable way to make that happen compared to most other brand-enhancement services. You don’t have to be a professional writer for your writing to reach a professional standard.
No matter what your project is, giving it an editing pass can bring you value in two main ways. First, improving the quality of the text provides your end users with a better reading experience and creates a more positive and more polished impression of all other aspects of your work. Second, having text edited by a trained professional frees you up from typo-hunting and comma-questioning to do what you do best, whatever wonderful thing that might be.
~Aliyah
