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As a new Helium user, it can be a bit intimidating trying to get used to the site. Helium is unlike any other article submission site in many ways. Here are some of the most common sorts of mistakes that new Helium users tend to make:

* Formatting mistakes. Because Helium does not allow HTML or any other sort of formatting in their articles, new Helium users sometimes wind up making formatting mistakes. They may not realize, for example, that they should leave an extra line break in between paragraphs. They may not realize that you can make bullet-point lists using asterisks, or make numbered lists. Formatting is one of the areas that new Helium users really ought to study before jumping too far in.

* Not rating properly. On Helium, you earn rating stars not only based on the number of articles that you rate, but the quality of your ratings. While Helium hasn't explained exactly how their article rating system works in terms of your ratings stars, you can be sure that just clicking through the ratings screens as quickly as possible won't earn rating stars for you. You need to spend some time on each rating, searching for problems with grammar, formatting, plagiarism, length and relevance.

* Missing the forums. Many new Helium users could benefit greatly from spending time in the Helium community forums. The forums are designed so that experienced users can share their advice with new users, and also so that Helium staff can interact with the community. The community section of Helium is one of the most useful parts of the site.

* Plagiarism. Whether it is intentional or not, many new Helium users wind up cutting and pasting their articles from Wikipedia or from another source. Helium does not tolerate plagiarism, and those articles, along with the accounts attached to them, will be deleted. In many cases this is intentional, but it is possible that someone just doesn't understand how plagiarism works.

Certainly, these aren't the only mistakes that new Helium users make, but they are some of the ones that seem to occur most frequently.

Learn more about this author, John W. Paulus.
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