by Carol Gioia

Created on: December 02, 2009

If your Helium article does not do well in the ratings, sometimes that is an indication of a problem of some type. It could be as simple as a few minor typos, or serious enough to require an entire rewrite.

Review your article and make desired changes by using the leapfrog tool, which can be accessed by clicking on the leapfrog option under the specific article on your "My Articles" page.

When the leapfrog screen comes up, you have two choices. First, you can make a few changes directly to the screen by clicking on "Revert to original article," on the top right.

Secondly, you can click on the other option, "Clear text," and re-copy and paste your corrected article from your computer.

Whichever option you choose, there are some considerations to keep in mind in order to ensure that your leapfrogged article will be accepted.

Tips for leapfrogging Helium articles:

- Review -

When you submit a new Helium article, go directly to your, "My articles," page and review the complete article to ensure it has translated exactly the way you intended.

You have a very short window of opportunity to make necessary corrections with an auto-leap. Check for formatting issues, minor typos, missing quotation marks or any other infractions that might hinder a good rating.

- Give it time -

If you determine your article is acceptable as is, give it some time to work its way through the rating pool. Sometimes it takes at least a week, or more, for an article to settle and reflect its true rank, especially if there are many articles under the title.

- Read over carefully -

If you feel enough time has gone by and your article is not satisfactorily ranked, read it over carefully. Look for the obvious infractions, such as, misspellings, missing or incorrect punctuation, grammar errors, poor formatting, and excessively long paragraphs.

After careful scrutiny, if you determine that your article is flawlessly written, turn a critical eye to the content. Is your opening paragraph interesting? Is your content on topic with the title? Is your concluding paragraph too weak?

- Make desired changes -

If you decide some changes are in order, keep in mind that raters will be looking for significant differences to justify the leapfrog.

If you have a typo or two, or missing punctuation to add, it might be better to email the Content desk to request those minor changes be made.

You have a limited number of leapfrogs available at any given time, (10% of your articles total,) so you will want to preserve

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