by Carol Gioia

Created on: November 01, 2007   Last Updated: June 30, 2009

Writers hoping to garner good ratings for their articles on Helium will want to avoid certain red flag items. There are the obvious infractions, such as not following the established writing guidelines, not meeting the word count criteria, or simply using poor grammar, spelling and punctuation. Sometimes, even with all these regulations scrupulously followed, writers inadvertently do things, which sabotage their efforts and cause their articles to plummet to the bottom of the ranks.

Some oversights are so blatant, the rater will be prejudiced before even reading the article. These include the following:

* Writing in all caps

Capitalizing every word is on-line shouting and considered rude or sarcastic. Any article containing capitalized phrases, or written completely in caps, is going to be poorly rated. Often the writer's intention is to emphasize his thoughts, but it is a good intention gone awry. Never try to draw attention with improper capitalization. Your purpose will be defeated.

* Repeating the title

Helium articles already have a title. Repeating it in the body of your article will be a turn off to most raters. The opening sentence is the first impression. Preceded by a repeated title, it is a bad first impression.

* Beginning in the middle

Articles beginning as if they are in the middle of an active conversation will be poorly rated. Always presume the reader has no idea what you are thinking, and introduce your article with a complete thought, reflecting the title subject, but not answering the title. Read your article aloud before posting. If your opening is similar to, "Yes, that's what I think" or "That is not what I would do," or any other variation along these lines, you can be sure your rating will suffer.

* Too low or too high word count

According to Helium guidelines, the word count requirement is between 400 and 1500 words. Anything drastically shorter, or boringly longer, will not fare well in the ratings. It takes about 400 words to develop an idea and present it well. Articles over 1500 words are often rambling, redundant or superfluous. Adhering to Helium's word count criteria is a priority for good ratings.

* Poor formatting

Be sure to break your article up into easy to read segments, with double spacing between each paragraph. For on line writing, it is advisable to keep sentences fairly short and paragraphs about four sentences long. An article which is one huge paragraph with no breaks is not going to do well rated against

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