David M. Weeks

Technical writer and editor

Telephone: 413.863.5188
E-mail: d_weeks@sonic.net
WWW: http://www.sonic.net/~dweeks/work/  

PROFILE

Software documentation specialist adept at analyzing and explaining complex systems, for both technical and general readers. Specializing in task-oriented, user-friendly online help. Able to find answers and solve problems both independently and as part of a team — praised for ability to “fill in the gaps.” Comfortable with Windows, Linux/UNIX, and MacOS. Expert-level MS Word; skilled writer of hypertext, solid HTML & CSS.

Industry-experienced editor and translator; former Senior Editor, Houghton Mifflin Company. PhD in philology; world-class command of English grammar, spelling, and style. Extremely detailed and careful worker.

KEY SKILLS

EXPERIENCE

2012–2023  Documentation Specialist, Active Club Solutions, Inc., Pleasanton, California

• Produced help systems and installation and training guides for a complex club management application and POS system

2010–2023  Freelance copyeditor

• Edited scholarly journals and books for Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, and others

2000–2001, 2005–2009, 2012–2019  Documentation Specialist, SynchroNet Marine, Inc., Pleasanton, California

• Produced and maintained printed user’s guides, modular online help systems, quick-start guide, and technical documentation for a large, constantly changing database application and service
• Working independently and with software engineers, created extensive documentation from the application and directly from C++ code
• Using VBA, programmed a custom single-source authoring system for MS Word

2001–2004  Documentation Specialist, EnCompass Knowledge Systems, Los Angeles

• Produced online information systems, technical documents, training manuals, and patent descriptions for the company’s advanced corporate management analysis software.

1997–1999  Editorial contributor, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, London

• Researched and edited etymologies, consulted on American English for the Microsoft Encarta World English Dictionary.
• Worked remotely from California and on site in London.

1997  Technical writer and documentation specialist, Insight Development Corporation, San Ramon, California

• Created functional specifications documents, printed manuals, and online help systems.

1995–1996  Technical writer and documentation specialist, California Medical Review, Inc., San Francisco

• Created printed manuals and Windows online help systems for a suite of applications for medical data collection and analysis.

SYSTEMS AND TOOLS

PC/Windows: (Windows 9x–Win7) — applications, system configuration, registry, MS Office macro programming

UNIX/Linux: (SuSE, Red Hat, Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian) — administration, utilities, shell scripting, virtualization

Internet: communications, e-mail, ftp, telnet/ssh, VPN, networking and security

Software tools:

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Copyeditor, Facing Crisis: Art as Politics in Fourteenth-Century Venice, by Stefania Gerevini. Dumbarton Oaks Studies, forthcoming.

Translator, Literary Politics in Antiquity: Studies on Cicero, Virgil, Horace, and Ovid, by Cédric Scheidegger Laemmle. Cambridge University Press, forthcoming (translated from German).

Copyeditor, A Commentary on The Old English and Anglo-Latin Riddle Tradition, by Andy Orchard. Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2021.

Copyeditor, The Juggler of Notre Dame and the Medievalizing of Modernity, by Jan M. Ziolkowski. 6 vols., OpenBook Publishers, 2018.

Translator, From the Steppes to the Sea: Indo-European and the “Indo-Europeans,” by André Martinet. In preparation.

“Communications: From Snail Mail to Email,” “Cyberspace: I Hear America Clicking,” “Transportation: Hitchin’ a Ride,” all in Speaking Freely, Oxford University Press, 1997.

Translator, Jung: A Biography, by Gerhard Wehr. Shambhala Press, 1987 (translated from German).

Translator of articles for the Encyclopedia of Religion. Macmillan Company, 1985–1986 (translations from French).

Editor (with Jaan Puhvel) and translator, The Plight of a Sorcerer, by Georges Dumézil. University of California Press, 1986 (translated from French).

Translator, The Stakes of the Warrior, by Georges Dumézil. University of California Press, 1983. (Translated from French, with passages from Old Norse, Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit.) Designed and executed dust-jacket art.

EDUCATION

University of California, Los Angeles. PhD in Indo-European Studies. Dissertation: Hittite Vocabulary. Nominated for Junior Fellowship, Harvard University. Teaching assistant in sociology.

University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Bachelor's Degree in Linguistic Anthropology and Sociology. Studies in sociology, sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology; Old English, Old Norse.

Hampshire College, Amherst, Mass. Studies in linguistics and sociology.

Deerfield Academy, Deerfield, Mass. Prize in Spanish.

Last modified 3 October 2023.