Why Choose Engaging Texts?

The texts you write throughout your career will reach countless readers. 

​Each of those readers will engage with your text in different ways, influenced not only by personal experience and knowledge but also by the choices you make as a writer. The words, sentence structures, organizational patterns, and rhetorical elements that you choose can make a difference in getting that job or promotion; in being awarded that scholarship, grant, or contract; in attracting that new client; in getting that manuscript accepted for publication; or in meeting any other goal you want to accomplish with your writing. 

​My editing services will help you meet those goals. My feedback on your writing moves beyond simple proofreading to engage your text in conversation and to anticipate the reader’s response to your ideas. I will help you identify the points in your text at which the reader is likely to disengage, and I will offer practical suggestions for keeping your reader on track and receptive to your ideas. As your editor, I will not only support you in creating a more engaging and effective text but will also help you in developing writing and language-use strategies that can be applied to all of your academic or professional communications. 

​While I specialize in working with university students and faculty members who use English as a second language, I am happy to work with adolescent and adult writers of any background. 

​I look forward to engaging your text and to helping you engage your academic or professional dreams!

​Happy Writing, 

​Dr. Lori A. Randall, Ph.D., ESL Teacher Education + Graduate Certificate in Teaching ESL

About Me

I diagram sentences for fun. Yes – you read that right – I diagram sentences for fun. I play with language the way other people play board games or musical instruments or sports. For the record, I also play board games and a couple of musical instruments, and I sometimes ride my sleek blue road bike, whose name is Aster, or my staunch grey hybrid bike, whose name is Mollusk. But at the end of the day, it is the chance to play with words – moving them around, mixing them up, making them sing – that truly brings me delight. 

​In 1996, I offhandedly put my love of words to good use by proofreading a paper for a friend. Proofreading quickly turned into a conversation with my friend about stylistic choices, which quickly morphed into a conversation about rhetorical choices, although neither one of us knew at the time that “rhetorical choices” was the term for the concept that lay at the heart of our conversation. That conversation quickly turned into more proofreading work, which turned into editing work, which turned into an informal business for family and friends who were in need of a second set of eyes to engage with their written texts. 

In the intervening years, my editing skills have been enriched by the following education and experience: a graduate certificate in Teaching English as a Second Language from Northern Arizona University; a doctoral degree in education with an emphasis on ESL Teacher Education from the University of Wisconsin-Madison; my work as a Lecturer at the University of Michigan’s Sweetland Center for Writing; and my work as the Coordinator of Multilingual Learning at Denison University. Through the years, I’ve worked with writers – both native and nonnative speakers of English – to increase the clarity and effectiveness of texts on a wide range of topics from anesthesiology and astronomy and history and linguistics and philosophy and psychology and public health to zoology and so many other fascinating topics representing every letter of the alphabet except, perhaps, the letter “Y.” (Check back in a few weeks to see if I’ve managed to remember having worked on a paper dealing with a topic that begins with the letter “Y.”) 

I look forward to further enriching my experience by working with you!