Each client has their own brand and specific tone of voice. I can adapt my writing to your style and am equally at home writing copy in English or translating Swedish into English. Creating campaigns, writing articles and editing are also my specialities. I am a words person not a designer or art director so I usually work with clients, design companies or advertising agencies who produce the layout.
Copywriting
A specialist in multinational advertising
I specialise in business-to-business advertising for export companies in Scandinavia. With many Scandinavian industrial and service companies operating on the world market, it makes sense to produce their advertising material directly in English rather than in the local Scandinavian language and then translate it into English. That’s where I come in – I can take the brief and produce original writing in English to sell their products and services globally. I can write all kinds of material such as complete campaigns, advertisements, brochures, articles, PR, film scripts, annual reports and websites.
My work
Dalloz Safety
GVA
Editing
Is your English completely correct?
When Sven-Göran Eriksson was England’s football manager, he was the first foreigner to hold this prestigious post. His English was good but not completely correct and he always came out with some strange phrases when he was being interviewed. He was team manager but he took some intensive coaching in the English language. In the same way, you may be a top manager in your company able to write understandable English but there is always a risk of some embarrassing mistakes if you are not a native English speaker. I can help to polish up your written English so that it is absolutely correct. That’s reassuring and also makes your presentations more professional.
Even if you are an English speaker, you may still appreciate some editing. Engineers and scientists sometimes write tortuous texts because they assume everyone is as scientific as them. I have a talent for making difficult technical texts more digestible.
My work
Entry Point North
Journalism
The art of writing articles
I am often commissioned to write articles with the specific purpose of promoting a product, service or the profile of a company. I have been writing this kind of article for 25 years for one of my clients Novozymes. My articles are published in their long-running customer magazine Bio Times that is extremely popular and well read by customers. I have also written for internal newspapers and newsletters as well as press releases, a great way of getting free publicity.
I take just as much pride in my work as any professional journalist writing and researching editorial material for a newspaper or magazine. There is an art to writing articles. Articles need to be interesting to catch the attention and they should not be ‘hard sell’ or boastful. Customer stories with testimonials are particularly interesting because the reader can easily identify with the customer’s situation and the story has high credibility.
In addition to the articles I write for clients, I also write articles for myself about subjects I am interested in, people I have met or places I have been.
My work
Biotimes
She World – air travel
She World – Nanotechnology
Sustainability
Environmental and social issues are moving up the business agenda
With a passionate interest in environmental and social issues, I particularly like writing about innovative products and services that help to protect our planet and reduce our impact. In the 1990s, I was fortunate to work for one of the pioneers in environmental and social reporting in Scandinavia – Novo Nordisk. This Copenhagen-based company has won numerous international awards for their reports and responsible approach to reporting. This kind of reporting is not about papering over the cracks but about telling it how it is and walking the talk.
Writing in a balanced serious way, I contributed to Novo Nordisk’s annual environmental report for a number of years and wrote Scandinavia’s first ever social report for Novo Nordisk published in June 1999. In fact, I was writing these sustainability reports before ‘sustainability’ became a much over-used buzzword.
My work
Bona
Novo Nordisk
Translation
A translation shouldn’t sound like a translation
I speak fluent Swedish after living in Sweden for more than 30 years. What makes me slightly different from most other translators of Swedish into English is that I make the translation sound like natural flowing English. All too often, translators do a fast literal translation almost word for word – and it sounds stilted and stale. I believe it is worth taking the time to refine the translation and, if necessary, to rewrite parts of it while still keeping the meaning and the essentials.
My work
Studentlitteratur
Proofreading
It’s never too late to change!
The very last step before publication is when things can easily go wrong. For example, the client puts a last-minute change directly into the text and doesn’t bother to double-check it with the writer. If the client is not a native English speaker, any change should always be checked with me or another native English speaker. Otherwise mistakes can creep in.
Proofreading is an art and you need to be really relaxed when you do proofreading otherwise you may miss the mistakes. I always see proofreading as the last chance to improve a text. As far as I am concerned, a text can always be improved.