Founder’s Foreword

Let me tell you how our journey started . . . and how we can pursue clarity together.

A man sitting at an outdoor wooden table with several books stacked in front of him, including titles like 'The Odyssey' and 'The Idea of a University,' in front of a brick wall and greenery.

I still remember where the ringed coffee stains were on the yellow legal pad on which I first sketched out the idea for Good Comma Editing. I just don’t recall whether I dripped coffee before or after I finished drafting my initial website copy at 3 a.m.

When I launched Good Comma, I was chest-deep in my six-year teaching career—and burning to take my editorial skills beyond the classroom. Why not take a chance? I thought. The nonprofits I care about need editors. And if they don’t realize that, businesses will. At the time, my slim team (a handful of freelancers, including some of my former students) scarcely dreamed Good Comma would expand into the full-time supplier of research, writing, and editing for professional teams from coast to coast it is today.

After more than a decade, four kids, and a lot of hustle, Good Comma Editing’s team has…:

  • written or edited more than 8,000,000 words for clients, including multimillion-dollar businesses and nonprofits across the United States;

  • served free-market think tanks, domestic and international Christian ministries, elected officials, investors, CPA firms, PR firms, marketing companies, online and print media publishers, academic establishments, and private families;

  • been published in The Wall Street Journal, National Review, World Magazine, The Washington Times, The Washington Examiner, RealClearPolitics. com, and affiliate sites,Townhall.com, RedState, and many other online and print outlets throughout the country;

  • testified in legislative hearings in two states (Connecticut and North Dakota); and

  • launched an Executive Writing Coaching program for individuals keen to invest in themselves as clear communicators, professionals, and leaders.

— Michael T. Hamilton
Founder & Lead Editor,
Good Comma Editing, LLC

— Michael T. Hamilton
Founder & Lead Editor, Good Comma Editing

Achieve Clarity with Us

How exactly does Good Comma work?

Our team serves yours. We listen. We learn your mission, vision, audience, and voice. We suggest process tweaks. Then we do what’s necessary to help you consistently replicate a message worthy of your organization and audience.

We supply four levels of editing:

  1. Proof & Publish (copy-editing),

  2. Clear Up & Clean Out (line-editing), 3. Rework & Refuel (rewriting), and 4. Good Comma Kamikaze (drafting from scratch). We also offer “Bulletproofing,” an extra layer of quality assurance.

We even offer a “Stewardship Fund” to let you bank unused services that you’ve paid us for, for later use.

Naturally, we can also manage processes for you.

Our staff have managed newspapers, built networks of contributors, trained teams, and inspired others to higher levels of achievement.

George Orwell wisely wrote, “[I]t is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes.” We propose to reverse this process: to use language better than the opposition, in pursuit of political and economic increase, to the glory of God.

Achieve Clarity With Us

Mission

Good Comma Editing supplies research, writing, and editing to help leaders state the most important things clearly and to protect the professional face of admirable businesses and ministries. We help our clients achieve excellence by making their documents clear, clean, correct, and concise.

Vision

We strive to be the choice partner in editorial teamwork for an extensive network of professionals who rely on clear communication to succeed and lead in liberty, clarity, and conviction.

Values

  • Clarity – of meaning and purpose

  • Purity – of motive and product

  • Stewardship – of people and processes

  • Creative destruction – breaking to make it new, defying every obstacle

  • Relentless service – counting others as more significant than ourselves

Distinctives

  • We have cared for more than 8 million client words since our launch in 2013.

  • We team-source creative solutions to writing, editing, and instructional needs.

  • We disrupt conventional systems of content development and instruction.

  • We complement clients’ existing teams, collaborating toward higher achievement.

  • We inspire long-term partnerships and chain reactions of quality assurance.

  • We specialize in communicating to biblically fluent, liberty-minded audiences.

From the Vault

Way back at 6 million client words cared for, we described ourselves this way:

Achieve Clarity with Us

  • “My book on biblical eldership was improved significantly by Good Comma’s team of editors. They cared for each word of my manuscript as though it were their own, demonstrated a high view of Scripture, and worked diligently for God’s glory. I recommend using Good Comma Editing.”

    — Alexander Strauch, author, Biblical Eldership (updated and completely revised, 2024)

  • “Good Comma enabled me to get my message out from my church and into the world. Working with their editors was easy. They quickly grasped the flow of my argument, and their input made it not only much stronger but also much more persuasive. The most frequent feedback I’ve gotten from my book has been that people are surprised at how clear it was. Well, that is owing directly to Michael and the team at Good Comma.”

    — Jesse Johnson, Lead Teaching Pastor and Author

    City of Man, Kingdom of God: Why Christians Respect, Obey, and Resist Government (2022)

  • “When it was time to perform a final edit on my book Sharing the Burden: The Samaritan Ministries Story, I turned naturally to Good Comma Editing. At Samaritan, we knew of GCE’s devotion to detail and high standards and wanted that for the book. GCE delivered the goods promptly. I would turn to no other service for my editing needs.”

    — Michael Miller, editor, Samaritan Ministries International, and author of Sharing the Burden: The Samaritan Ministries Story (2020)

  • “Good Comma Editing has been a wonderful, highly skilled, and professional partner in our efforts, providing our team with much-needed research and editorial services. The Heartland Institute highly recommends GCE and its staff of editors and researchers, to whom we have previously entrusted important public policy projects that our donors and supporters care deeply about. When we need editorial help, we turn to Good Comma Editing first, and we wouldn’t think twice about recommending the GCE team to anyone in need of professional editorial services in the future.”

    — Justin Haskins, Senior Fellow at The Heartland Institute and author of several books, including Stopping Socialism: The Moral Case Against Marx’s Radical Dream (2019).

  • “As a first-time author, one of the greatest concerns is the quality of the content. A dream poorly executed will quickly derail an author's expectations, however low or high these expectations may be. When GCE stepped into the conversation, this grave concern turned into growing confidence. GCE’s best-in-class team lays to rest any concern surrounding grammar, vocabulary, and logic through their thorough editing process. Bellwether Blues has been an outstanding success largely because the contents of the book allow the reader to engage the big ideas without the noise of poor logic or faulty grammar. GCE deserves tremendous credit for making that possible.”

    — Jonathan Jakubowski, Author

    Bellwether Blues: A Conservative Awakening in the Millennial Soul (2020) and board chairman of the Forge Leadership Network

  • “Good Comma is a team I can trust. They are truly masters of communication. They are able to speak into projects at the highest levels and into the finest details. They are partners, they are experts, they are friends.” – Brandon West, Founder, PHOS Creative

    – Brandon West, Founder, PHOS Creative