About
Jonathan Fletcher, PhD
I've been editing academic and commercial documents for many years, working on a wide range of materials, from journal articles and books to presentations and press releases. I’m also a qualified teacher of business English, which gives me a good grounding in the nuts and bolts of grammar, spelling and sentence structure.
I’m pleased to offer editing services for business and social science. You can read about my background in each of these areas below.
I'm based in Portugal, near Lisbon (the same timezone as the UK), where my wife and I share an old house with our two rescue dogs and an African Grey parrot.
Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.
Business
I have worked in advertising and design agencies as a brand strategist in London, Amsterdam, Singapore and New York.
Over 25 years I’ve also written and edited many board-level presentations, company reports, brand books and press releases, as well as providing support to senior executives who want to improve their writing and communication skills.
I enjoy the contrast and challenges that the language of business requires, often aiming for simplicity, clarity and persuasion in the context of limited space and time constraints.
Social Science
After completing my PhD in social and political science at Cambridge in the early 1990s, I spent two years as a research fellow at the University of Amsterdam, a city where I lived on and off for over 20 years.
My thesis was published as Violence & Civilisation: An Introduction to the Work of Norbert Elias. Cambridge, Polity Press (1997). Since then I’ve written articles on diverse subjects such as consumer behaviour, black and white photography and cultural differences.
Today I’m not affiliated with an academic institution, but I have presented papers at conferences involved with Eliasian sociology and I still maintain contacts with many academics who work with an Eliasian approach.
Rates
Rates depend on what you need and how much intervention in the text you require. You can find my indicative rate card here.
If you would like to request an estimate, please contact me by email, text or contact form with as much information about your project as you can provide, including your timeline and a sample if that’s relevant to your request.
Testimonials
“For many years Jonathan Fletcher has improved the sociological English of my texts and handled them with great care and a delicate sensibility for apt expressions and metaphors. His talent for the refinement of written English equals that for his sociological understanding. I can fully recommend his service to everyone who produces scientific prose.”
“During the process of writing and submitting my PhD, Jon gave me invaluable advice on the professional standards of presentation and the details required of a formal academic piece of work. He provided rigorous guidance on laying out the document and the use of academic English, whether in relation to the complexities of meaning and grammar, or the more straightforward problems of eradicating errors such as misspellings and typos. His expertise has been built on a very successful career in sociology and business that has seen the publication of his seminal book on arguably the most radical and significant sociologist of the modern era, Norbert Elias. I highly recommend working with him – thank you Jon!”
“Working with Jon Fletcher has always been a pleasure, not only because of his linguistic feeling and precision, but because he is such good company. He has edited almost everything I have published in English since we first met back in the 1980s. He is an excellent sounding board for ideas and how they can be developed throughout a text. Jon is one of the best editors I have worked with and I would not hesitate to recommend him.”