About

Top Hat Word & Index is a technical communications company out of the Seattle area, and registered as a sole proprietorship in the State of Washington.

Paul provides approximately 20 years of professional technical communications and writing experience, part of which involves a career as an urban planning professional. He served mainly small communities and towns from that of staff planner to a Community Development Director in Arizona and the state of Washington. He spearheaded numerous projects including authoring and editing a wide variety of planning documents.

These technical communications were not only designed to reflect the vision of communities, but served as consensus-building tools to inform citizens, developers, public officials, decision-makers, and agencies at various levels of government. By coaching these various stakeholders, Paul helped to empower communities as they shaped the planning visions of their future.

Paul takes on technical writing projects that involve environmental and town planning today. The combination of his planning background, education, writing experience, technology background, travel experience, and wide range of personal interests provides Paul with a broad palette from which to work as a technical writer, indexer, and editor.

Paul earned his Bachelor of Arts in Geography and in the Master of Environmental Planning program at Arizona State University. He augments his technical writing background with certificates in granstmanship from the University of Arizona, a Certificate in Technical Writing and Communication from Bellevue College, and completion of The Graduate School (USDA) Basic Indexing course (which is anything but basic).

Paul is currently serving as the Vice President of the Pacific Northwest chapter for the American Society for Indexing (ASI), where he spearheads chapter meeting programming. In addition to being the editor and coordinator for the local chapter e-newsletter 'Indexers Ink,' he is also involved at ASI's national level with conference programming and assists ASI's Digital Trends Task Force (DTTF) as a marketing liaison. Having authored many articles on indexing, Paul has a history of collaborating with his colleagues by also spearheading articles for ASI's quarterly bulletin 'KeyWords.'

Top Hat Word & Index and Paul, are involved with the following organizations: American Society for Indexing (Pacific Northwest Chapter) | PNW Newsletter Coordinator for 'Indexers Ink' (2009-present), PNW Programming (2009-present), PNW Marketing (2008); Society for Technical Communication (Puget Sound Chapter); Northwest Independent Editors Guild; American Planning Association | Speaker for Arizona State conference in Oro Valley, AZ (2001); Association of American Geographers; Gamma Theta Upsilon (International Geographic Honor Society); Seattle Bookfest | 2009 publicity, programming, and videographer; Richard Hugo House (Seattle, WA); Wordstock (Portland, OR); Montana Festival of the Book (Missoula, MT)

All inquiries are welcome.