About T&T

For more than twenty years, T&T Productions Ltd has specialised in the editing and typesetting of journals and books. Our clients range across academic and trade publishing, and include Princeton University Press, the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Risk Books and Journals, Agenda Publishing and the European Investment Bank. Our projects range from short reports for think tanks to prestigious 1,000-page multi-author works of reference.

We are a small team (there are currently six of us), and we work in an open-plan office. Our employees are self-starters and are expected to show initiative and efficiently manage their own projects, but we also often collaborate with other members of staff to solve problems, and the asking of questions is always strongly encouraged.

Our usual practice is to combine copyediting and typesetting in a single process, using either LaTeX or InDesign for the text and Illustrator for the graphics. The content varies from text only to text with a large amount of mathematical copy, and the subject matter ranges from finance and economics to the mathematical sciences, via social policy and historical biography.

About the role

We are looking for an editorial assistant to learn or develop their copyediting and typesetting skills while also taking on some of the more mundane low-level jobs, at least initially. Everyone in the office, including the company’s directors, does at least some boring repetitive work, so if the thought of spending the odd Tuesday afternoon editing bibliographies to style or a whole day editing and relettering graphs fills you with dread, then this may not be the role for you.

The majority of our regular journal work involves highly technical content, either in the field of mathematics or in mathematics-heavy economics/finance. While a background/interest in these fields would therefore be a plus, it is not something that should put you off: half of our successful staff over the last decade have started out with minimal skills in handling mathematics copy.

It should be noted that T&T’s focus is copyediting and typesetting – it is not the place to hone your writing skills.

About you

• You will have a strong command of the English language and a keen eye for detail, caring about spelling, grammar, punctuation and consistency. Strong copyediting skills are absolutely crucial.
• You will be able – keen even! – to tackle writing that is technically difficult and involves something of a language barrier (75% or more of the content we work on is submitted by ESOL authors).
• You won’t be daunted by editing subject matter you don’t understand.
• You should be able to work unsupervised, taking initiative and managing your own workload. You will be an organised individual, adept at prioritising appropriately and keeping deadlines in mind.
• You will have the ability to absorb feedback and learn from it. This is perhaps the most important skill you can possess for things to go well in the jobs we are offering.
• You should be able and willing to communicate clearly and concisely with authors and clients, with courtesy and occasionally diplomacy.
• You should be keen to learn about new typesetting systems and other bits of software as well as being willing to troubleshoot when appropriate. Some experience with HTML or similar would be a bonus, as would an interest in programming.
• Experience in LaTeX would be a particular plus, but we will give extensive typesetting training to the successful candidates.

We would consider applications from people who wish to work part time, and for full-time employees the working hours are flexible.

How to apply

As a taster of the test, and as a gauge of whether or not this is the right job for you, try spotting the deliberate errors in the following short extracts: there may be more than one per passage. Please include the corrected versions at the end of your covering letter with your application. Please note: if you have difficulty spotting the errors in the six passages below quickly and without help, then this may not be the job for you.

• How can we assure that the minister will stick to his principals? The least he can do, is try.
• The range of models introduced in the previous chapter remain useful. Each model changes it’s behaviour as new data arrives.
• The task can be accomplished in no less than three different ways, but his laps in concentration resulted in a miner accident.
• The strength of Sally and Tims’ preference lead to an unambiguous decision being chosen.
• The populous is not some homogenous mass but a collection of a large number of individuals.
• The apalling behavior of the president was criticised from both sides of the house.

We would welcome CVs from applicants with an experience of jobs in publishing but also from recent graduates who want to get into the field. Only successful applicants will be contacted, and the first contact will be an invitation to our south London office to sit a copyediting test (the possibility of sitting the test remotely is also sometimes an option). Invitees who perform well will be invited back for interview at a later date (sometimes the test and interview can be combined if a candidate has to come a long way).

If you would like to work for us, please email your CV and a covering letter (including corrected versions of the passages above) to sam [at] tandtproductions.com