by Rachelle de Bretagne

Created on: September 11, 2008   Last Updated: January 20, 2012

Often during rating, it is noticeable that members of Helium don't make the best of their articles. Some have astoundingly astute information which is valuable to the site, though when appearing in rating boxes looks unprofessional, and this isn't always the fault of the writer. There are several ways to address the problem and to get your articles looking great and this article is aimed at writers who have articles with no breaks between paragraphs, in order to help them present their work in such a manner as to gain success as a Helium writer.

Type of text used

If you write your work on a word processing program, the best way to save your work to transfer to the site is Plain text. This eliminates a lot of problems in the transition of articles and will be more likely to include all the paragraph spacing within your original article submission. There is software which doesn't react well with Helium website, and which will place extra spaces into your work. If you find that this happens, you have a choice. Next time you submit an article, take those spaces out, or when you write into your software program don't even bother putting them in. Such is the case with OpenOffice.

Indentations

What members have experienced tells them that if you use indentations, often the form of the article gets lost during the transition period. If you write with everything set straight against the left margin, this helps the transition and you will also get a clear picture of what your article will look like once it is on the site. Look over your article, take out indentations, and then realistically appraise if your article needs more paragraph spacing, which is applied by pressing the return key twice after a paragraph. Indentations are not AP style format and don't look good on Helium.

Submitting the article

When you submit an article, the box on Helium allows you to scroll your article. It is always wise to do this, since spacing problems will show up when scrolling. To insert paragraphs at this stage, press the return key twice after the last word of a paragraph, and the spacings are inserted.

Avoiding writing direct to the submission box

Those who do not know how to copy and paste tend to write direct to the site, and this is a recipe for disaster. Often these writers will press submit without scrolling and without giving due care for layout. The disadvantages of writing direct to the site outweigh any advantage, since the site can also time out. Write

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