I’m Robert Kidd. Editing is my life’s work.

I grew up two hours north of Toronto, around Elmvale, Wasaga Beach and Georgian Bay. As a teenager I was a lifeguard on Wasaga Beach.

In 1978 I moved west and became a child care counsellor at Camp Trapping, a wilderness camp near Prince George, BC, for young men in trouble with the law. I led canoe trips, cross-country runs and work projects, and was promoted to shift co-ordinator. My director wrote that the program “demands a high degree of resourcefulness and organizational abilities which Bob handled well.”

I then worked as a surveyor on the Dempster Highway in the Yukon and Northwest Territories, earned diplomas in electricity and industrial electronics at Vancouver Community College, and managed a branch of Household Trust in Richmond, BC.

I went back to school and earned an honours degree in English at the University of British Columbia, followed by graduate studies in English at the University of Victoria. One professor called me “a very fine writer and speaker.” Another called me “thoughtful, articulate and personable.”

That combination still shapes how I edit. A trades diploma taught me how technical things work. An English degree taught me how readers think. Together, they make dense technical material straightforward rather than daunting.

In 1992 I joined NKK (now JFE Steel), one of the world’s largest steel producers, as the sole English specialist in its research and development department. For five years I edited engineering documents and specifications for bridges, buildings and steel quality, and wrote and edited speeches and presentations for general managers. I also prepared technical papers for international conferences and scientific journals.

In 1997 I founded 99 Red Balloons Japan, a company that brought English to primary-school children through lively, live-character lessons. I built the website, wrote the curriculum, hired the performers, appeared on NHK television as its manager, and sold the company at a significant profit.

From 1999 to 2002 I directed the language consulting department at IBM Japan and Lotus Japan in Tokyo. I edited software manuals, design specifications, financial reports and speeches, edited the monthly employee newsletter, created the house style standards and wrote the training materials for IBM’s business and technical English courses.

In 1998 I founded EditFast and TranslationHelp. Over the years they have handled more than 10,000 writing, editing, proofreading and translation projects: technical, scientific, medical, financial, academic and literary. I recruited, tested and supervised more than 4,000 freelance editors, writers and proofreaders and more than 500 translators, and built the quality standards each was measured against.

Global Village Language Services has been online since 2002. I later built EditingTests.com to test editors and proofreaders. From 2006 I also worked under contract as a Google Quality Rater, judging how well web pages answered real searches against detailed written guidelines.

Some of my clients have stayed for many years. I have edited physical oceanography research for a professor at Osaka University for about ten years. I edit food chemistry and toxicology papers for Professor Takayuki Shibamoto at the University of California, Davis, who has worked with more than 50 English specialists.

In 2014 I worked as a native English technical editor for TPS in Yokohama, rewriting translated Hitachi computer and high-tech documentation. I regularly completed 7,000 to 10,000 words of heavy editing a day.

Organizations whose documents I have written, edited or proofread include Google, IBM, Lotus, Kodak, Hitachi, Nokia, Ericsson, Ford, Caterpillar, Suncor, Fisher Investments, Cartier, the United Nations World Food Programme and The Nelson Mandela Foundation.

I have worked with new technology all my career. I built websites by hand in the 1990s, ran online marketing for my own companies and spent years rating search results for Google. When AI writing tools arrived, I put them to work on real editing.

What I found is simple. AI writes fast, but it does not know your reader, your facts or your standards. An experienced editor does. My job now is to help your team get the speed of AI with the care of an editor.

In my own words from years ago, and still true: “I enjoy writing because it sits at the intersection of problem-solving and communication. Strong writing clarifies complexity, reduces friction, and creates trust between organizations and their audiences.”

I live on the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia. My wife is Japanese and we have a son. I have paddled kayaks on five oceans and hundreds of lakes and rivers, from Hokkaido to Sri Lanka to Tuktoyaktuk. I have hiked the West Coast Trail, counted salmon in Bamfield, and I still look up at the stars whenever the sky is clear.

I want my work to help people. As I once wrote, “I want to give something back from the wonderful and bountiful life I have lived so far.”