by Rachelle de Bretagne

Created on: January 10, 2009

One of the most important aspects for a successful Helium article is layout. Many writers with a traditional background in writing fail to produce Helium articles which are easy to read, simply because they believe that their standard language learning skills are sufficient to make their articles worthy contenders in an Internet site where competition means the making or breaking of the article itself. Internet writing is a completely different concept. This article explains the difference, so that writers can adapt their style to fit into an "easy to read" market which depends upon writers for its success.

*Addressing the topic from the start.
*Layout.
*Subheadings.
*Making relevant information easily available.
*Order.

Addressing the topic from the start.

Often what writers do, in their keen moment to get words onto "paper" is go into a topic without really thinking of how important the introduction is. An introduction that takes time to warm up fails on the Internet simply because people tend to browse, rather than to read in depth. If they have to wade through piles of unnecessary padding at the beginning of the article, it doesn't make the article easy to read. Similarly in ratings, those articles which do not address the topic straight away will tend to be rated down.

Layout.

Layout of an article on Helium is vital to clarity. It is hard to read one big jumbled up text. It simply isn't possible to skip bits of an article which are not relevant reading and concentrate on areas which are when there is no paragraph spacing. Spacing is essential, and double spacing between paragraphs vital.

The layout can include bullets. These help readers to discern which area of the article is of interest to them. Articles with bullets tend to do better than those without, since they are easy for the reader to read, and clearly point out at the beginning of the article what contents that article has within its text.

Conclusions are important as well, because just like in every aspect of reading, the conclusion is what the reader wants to understand bearing in mind everything written within the article. A conclusion helps readers to make decisions faster, and thus makes the article easier to read, in that this represents the bottom line.

Subheadings.

There are those who believe that numbers work well. This doesn't work as well as subheadings. Subheadings give a great indication of what a reader can expect to find all the way through an article, and thus help the reader to find things

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