by Martine Pauwels

Created on: January 02, 2010   Last Updated: January 03, 2010

Helium is a great on-line writer's community with a lot of potential, since it is open to everybody all over the world. Still there is a catch. The language is English.

Now opening up to the entire world is great, but you have several variants of English. On Helium is it presumed the American standard. It is an American company and there have to be some rules.

Fact is that it there are also many people in the world who write here in their second language or in an English dialect. Many Europeans that learned English at school are used to the British English.

Now the spelling is not the problem. Just throw out the "U" in many words like colour or behaviour and you might be on your way. The main grammar is also quite the same. Well, some expressions are not and some words have a different meaning, but on average, the English grammar remains the English grammar.

It is a bit of the joke between Flemish and Dutch. It is the same language and we pronounce things a little different from time to time, but we do understand each other. We are not giving our sentences different structures than the base grammar allows us to.

Still there are things international writers better not do. They should consider that morals vary all over the world.

So even if you can write perfect English, the content is also important. What you can say in the US and is alright, might be a big issue in another country. Sometimes it is even illegal.

You can be an opinionated writer, but if you for example want to promote certain racial theories, be aware that what you do might be legal in your country, but there are some where it is considered a criminal offense.

Religion is also an important issue. Remember the Mohammed cartoons a Danish newspaper published? It was not a criminal offense in Denmark, but it did not please the Muslim population.

Can writers criticise from their view, which they have from their national background?

All writers do. Try to be neutral. You are still a human being. For some professionals, like journalists it might be important to stick to the facts, but even in new reports people do not tend to be objective.

An example: how did CNN report the war in Iraq and how did Al Jazeera do? Compared with the news on European channels, you wondered if we were all talking about the same war.

Let's not be hypocrites. Nobody is perfect and it is alright to have an opinion.

That is why international writer's communities like Helium might be useful. You can have so many articles written

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