by Don Kwikshot

Created on: March 23, 2009

There can be no doubt that the individual can rise to great heights on Helium. I have been writing and rating for nearly a year now and, every so often, there is a really good article, written correctly, spelt correctly, with correct grammar, and I feel once again encouraged that there are people out there who can write, even if their writing has not been taken up by any well-kinown publisher.

Reading the articles of others is often a cause of considerable insight into a topic which has not been foremost in my mind; I find it interesting and instructive to see things through the eyes of others. Yet there is also an awful lot of poor writing on the site - writing which, in truth, should never see the light of day. Perhaps these writers, these authors of arcticles which are largely incomprehensible about topics which are sometimes abstruse in the extreme, gain an insight into their own work. Perhaps some of them are actually discouraged to the point that they stop writing; perhaps some of them are able to take constructive criticism and thus improve their own standards. I would like to think that the latter is the case.

However, I feel that a minimum standard of literacy should be enforced on the site. This would considerably encourage writers who evidently have some ability to continue to better themselves, perhaps to the point that their work is noticed and taken up by established hard-copy publishers. Writers who evidently have little or no ability would either take a hike, take after-hours lessons in English, or decide that, after all, writing is not their individual strength. It pains me considerably to read so many articles where subject and verb are not in agreement; where the written word is a direct mirror of the way English is spoken in some parts of the world; where words which sound alike are all spelt the same way (lead and led, for instance), and where punctuation and apostrophes are both hopelessly lacking or incorrect. Reading articles like these leads me to flag the person and to wonder why I bother to write for the site at all.

Regardless of the heights that one could achieve on this site, monetary gain is certainly not one of them. If you want to get rich from writing, don't join. I have made a princely $15 in eleven months - not enough to keep a canary alive!

It has also to be said, unfortunately, that Helium inevitably favours the American writer since most of the interesting topics where one could earn good money can only be written to by Americans.

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