Archive - May 16, 2023

When an errorous statement is published about the Peace Corps and our experience knows the statement is not true, what should the response be?   A professor  had written  a book about federal agencies and included the Peace Corps with glowing praise, but he also wrote that only men were sent to Puerto Rico for Outward Bound Training. I had no success in convincing him to include that women also went  to Puerto Rico for that vigorous training. More recently, an RPCV  friend explained to me that she had received an inquiry from a student in Europe writting about the history of Peace Corps.  He had learned in a conference that Peace Corps had intervened in the Netherlands in 1962 and stayed for ten years  He later said it found the same information in an AI website.  That statement about Peace Corps is not true. It was time to query . . .

Book Helpline is a small international book editing company who have helped RPCVs writers. The company is over 10 years old and has worked with hundreds of authors from all over the world in both fiction and nonfiction.  Among the writers have been a former political prisoner in Brunei, a government minister in Zambia, and a homeless Englishman in Thailand. Book Helpline editors are experts in developmental editing—Is the story right? Is it interesting, consistent, logical, and easy to follow?—and copy editing, where grammar, spelling, punctuation, and word choice are corrected. They also evaluate a client’s work and suggest one or both types of edits depending on the material and the author’s goals. Today they have editors in the US, UK, and the Netherlands. Contact: Judith Henstra judith@bookhelpline.com