Who am I?
Rebull was always that person whom others asked to look over their writing. Persuasive writing — and creative writing — were core to her identity from childhood on. From a winning contest entry arguing for the inclusion of more African American women on US postal stamps in middle school, the stakes would grow to be quite a bit more serious: Multiple college professors, unaccustomed to seeing trained, polished prose in student essays, required persuasion that every source was indeed accurately cited. Rebull learned the ins and outs of research databases and style manuals simultaneously to defend her writing in substance and presentation. Happily for all, she convinced each of her professors of her sincerity — and gained an early mastery of the changing nuances of style.
Like most editors, Rebull took a circuitous path to her current career. After seriously contemplating a profession in classical violin, Rebull spent several years traveling in Asia, studying Chinese, and researching classical Chinese theatre (xiqu 戲曲). She wrote and successfully defended a dissertation on the modern history of Chinese theatrical aesthetic theory and reforms. She subsequently published her research in both scholarly journals and in edited published volumes. Her colleagues never stopped asking for “freeglancing” (a free editorial review of their writing), and it was only when one of them offered remuneration that she considered the values of editing as a career.
What is this?
Ink Wash Edits was founded after years spent marinating in the intellectual foment created by the students in Art History, Theatre, Cinema and Media Studies, and East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago and the postdoctoral and other visiting scholars at International Institute of the University of Michigan.
Skills specifically useful for the social sciences were trained with two years spent doing in-house work for Research Square Company, during its years as a component of Springer Nature. Rebull trained in statistics, learned to edit in LaTeX, and edited many economics papers across multiple subspecialties. She ensured that her foundational skills were rock solid by independently achieving a Certificate in Copyediting from the University of California, San Diego.1
My position on AI
We all benefit from full transparency and accuracy in communication, and that includes in the production of written, edited materials. The use of a human editor is entirely compatible with AI tools, defined as large language models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini. However, I do not use AI during my professional editing process. This does not mean that authors themselves cannot use AI.
If AI has been used at some point during writing, whether before or after a human editor was used, this information must be disclosed to your publisher and your readers. Please talk to the editor in charge of your project at the press; they can advise you specifically on best practices used with their house.
- Did you just wonder how style guides handle university names with specific locations? I did, too! There’s such variation across institutions (e.g., commas, dashes, colons, etc.) that the general principle is to defer to the university on their preferences. When it comes to businesses or people, we honor their chosen names. I think that’s pretty cool. ↩︎
Ink Wash Edits 