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The majority of people reading this article are probably already Helium members and therefore either are aware of Helium as a continuing education plan or don't yet understand why it truly is just that.

If you're a writer and your goal is to sharpen your skills and make your writing more versatile and marketable, you're probably aware of the benefits of writing for Helium: the Community boards are filled with people who will answer your questions, review your writing, and provide feedback and constructive criticism.

If you're a beginner with a lot to say but limited practice in putting "pen to paper," you may or may not be aware of the learning opportunities on Helium. My suggestions: to find out what you might be missing, read the User Guide, every word of it. Explore the Community message boards; read questions and answers from other writers; and learn to ask for help when you need it.

For our non-native English speakers, I applaud you. English is an difficult language to learn, and learning to express your thoughts in writing in a way that will make sense to native speakers is a daunting task and takes a long time to perfect. Keep at it. Many of us will be happy to help you.

As with any online learning, the major responsibility is on the learner rather than the instructors. If your articles are consistently rated near the bottom of the heap, you have to make the effort to find resources to help you learn why. There are hundreds of websites that can help, as well as many good books. Search for English grammar or punctuation to help you learn these basic concepts.

In an effort to help you understand why some of your articles never seem to move up on the list in the ratings, I'm including a few key points that cause me to rank some writers lower. They include proper formatting, proper punctuation, spelling (the Spell Checker is there for a reason!), and either using an entirely wrong word, or confusing one form of a word for a similar word. I hope they'll be useful.

FORMATTING: Helium allows virtually no fancy formatting like using bold or italic text, bullet lists, etc. It's frustrating, but is the best test of whether your words alone express your thoughts effectively.

Since what we write here will be read primarily online, it's particularly important to add a lot of "white space" - a blank line between paragraphs. Reading online is hard on the eyes. Shorter paragraphs are absolutely essential, and the white spaces provide a bit of a rest for the eyes before they

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