About Marguerite

Marguerite combines a love of writing and typography with technical skills to distill complex topics into interesting and easily grasped articles—-and then present them in crisply formatted, printer-ready files.

Marguerite has been fascinated by writing and typesetting since childhood. She began exploring the mechanics of printing at age 12 by taking apart blocks of hand-set type. Her job was distributing the letters back into the California job cases for a neighbor whose sideline was printing memorial cards for funeral homes.

She wasn't actually published until high school, when she won honorable mention in a statewide poetry contest with a sonnet. She further honed her skills by writing for her local newspaper, The Gettysburg Times.

Writing and Editing

Since then, she combined her love of horses and her love of writing by submitting 71 magazine articles to national equestrian publications including Horseplay and The Chronicle of the Horse. Seventy of the 71 articles were published-an indication of how carefully she researched the audience of the magazine, the desires of the editors, and her scrupulous attention to deadlines. Several of her stories were nominated by the editorial staff of The Chronicle of the Horse as "best news article" in successive years of the magazine's annual journalism awards. One year, one article was named "honorable mention."

Marguerite worked for McGraw-Hill publishing for five years as senior copywriter for the technical book clubs. After she was hired, her supervisor told her that when they reviewed her writing test, she captured exactly the tone and content they desired-it was as though she had been writing for them for years.

She gained experience in general copyediting and AMA-style medical editing while working at Multimedia Software Inc., Accelera, and later AcceleraRomar. She currently edits as a contractor for Catoctin Ridge LLC and Ethos Health Communications.

Typesetting and Layout

Her love of typesetting and layout kept pace with her writing career. She's worked in the early cold-type production before WYSIWYG ("what you see is what you get") displays and has done page layout with paper, wax, and sharp knives.

She was fascinated by the first generation of desktop publishing software and has kept up with the software's evolution all the way through Quark® and Adobe® InDesign® CS3. She has an iMac equipped with the entire Creative Suite 3 to augment the Windows desktop and laptop already in her office.

While working for Multimedia Inc., a firm that created training software and Web sites, she expanded both her HTML and word-processing skills. It was a simple step to explore HTML formatting because of its many similarities typesetting codes. Her Microsoft Word capabilities expanded to learn Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) programming, sometimes called "macros." These skills were used to help meet production deadlines and budgetary limitations by automating many word processing tasks associated with software production.

Her current typesetting and page layout accounts are Catoctin Ridge LLC, Calvert Education Services, and DJK Consulting.

Education and Activities

Marguerite holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English (magna cum laude) from Berry College, located near Rome, Georgia. She was inducted into Alpha Chi, a national honor society. A flute player since elementary school, she plays Irish music with friends. She also enjoys training and entering Rally Obedience competitions with her two rat terriers.

See also her LinkedIn Profile (Web page opens in new tab)

home | about | client access | contact | site map