

Free Website Copy Audit
Is your website copy working for your business? Send me the URL and I'll tell you three simple writing fixes to make your website work harder
PORTFOLIO

Business Showcase South West
Official printed-material proofreader and copy editor for Business Showcase South West.

Students Abroad Foundation (IES)
Writing articles to help Asian students planning to study in the UK

HenQueens
Ridiculously good fun copywriting for hen dos in Bristol

Colston’s School
Copy creation for prospective Colston's parents and students

Professional Writing Academy
Editorial support, curriculum development and course moderation of online writing courses.

Etihad
Copy creation for Etihad customer-facing campaign

Lufthansa
Under NDA, I've worked for Lufthansa. All I can say is it's visible.

Ignitec
Website copy and ongoing content support for Ignitec in Bristol

Clarks
Retail copywriting for Clarks shoes' packaging, window displays and trade magazines.

Engadget: The Morning After
Edit and proofread Engadget's (owned by AOL) daily newsletter -- the Morning After.

International Press Institute
Author of a coffee-table book celebrating global press-freedom heroes and editor for several handbooks for journalists.

Wings for Life World Run
Writing, editing and proofreading all comms for Red Bull's international audience

Red Bull Media House
Ghost editor, proofreader and writer in the RBMH world

Wings for Life
Editing and proofreading for international charity

Expedia
High-volume editing and proofreading

Trainline
High-volume editing and proofreading

Melt Content
Freelance senior editor for content agency

National Association of Jewellers
Rewrite curricular in a more-accessible voice

Mail Travel
Overview Commissioned by Melt Content, I wrote a number of travel articles for Mail Travel. It’s fun to inject more […]
What People Say About Me
Alison Bethel McKenzie
International Press Institute
Karin Bock-Leitert
Executive Producer at Red Bull
Anita Gerhardter
Wings for Life CEO
Anna Berkl
PR Manager
Robert Seeger
Social Guy & Public Speaker
Elisabeth Lyons
German to English translator
Dan Hart
Founder of Melt Content Agency
Esther Feltham
Creative Director at eyespeak
Deborah Martin
Dentist at University of Nottingham
Hannah Dean
Founder of HenQueens
Hello, I'm Lucy
Copy editor, proofreader and writer
I live in Bristol’s Harbourside, looking out across the water. From here, I edit, proofread, create and write for my family of clients. I’m very much in my happy place.
Under my belt, I have tucked an MA in professional writing from Falmouth University, a BA in English lit and lang (yes, fine, and American studies — it was the 90s) and a PGCE (teacher training) from the University of Nottingham.
I’ve loaded my toolbox of tricks during five years teaching grammar, writing and editing at Salzburg University (2010 to 2015), a decade of teaching English as a foreign language (2003 to 2013) and 14 years of real-world commercial wordsmithing (since 2005) that has taken me into all kinds of industries.
I’ve done time in everything from construction to shoes, jewellery to travel, extreme sports to airlines, Lithuanian rock lyrics to curry-sauce packaging. And that’s on a quiet day. One of my subedits, Use With Care: A Reporter’s Glossary of Loaded Language in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, a handbook created by the International Press Institute made it on to Stephen Colbert’s ‘The Colbert Report’ on CBS in 2014.
CURRENT PROJECTS
- Awaiting publication of my American punctuation book ‘Actually, the comma goes here’
- Working on an exciting new training book for a real-life Olympian
- Creating website copy for the amazing HenQueens
- My first byline at Engadget, Keeping kids organised and on task using tech still getting the shares
- Fine-tuning my four-week online version of my write-your-website workshops
- Named official proofreader for the Business Showcase South WestÂ
- Sending my congratulations to the guys at Ignitec, who have moved into their swish new pad
- Creating content for my R&D companies, Ignitec in Bristol, DeepImpact in Switzerland
- Looking forward to seeing the curry sauce packaging I wrote the copy for
- Getting my daily fix of editing for Engadget’s The Morning After
- Guiding a dentist in her article writing (yep, she made it into the British Dental Journal) UPDATE — twice!
… there’s more, but no one likes a showoff.
Latest Language Musings
Plan Your Writing
On my write your own website course, we use this template as a starting point for longer-form writing, say blogs, case studies and even newsletters,
GCSE English doesn’t help
You've got a GCSE in English, you use English every day, so why are you struggling so much with writing your website content?
A poem
So if you want words to really work hard Online or offline I’m in your back yard
The before and after of edited writing
Encouraging children to recraft and be brave enough to make big change
Content production … and it’s only Wednesday
I don't often audit the content production I get through in a week, so this was quite an eye opener.
Five reasons to use the passive voice
Six positives if you count annoying any English teacher who’s told you to only write in the active voice. Writing […]