Obvious ads are the number one reason your articles get rejected! Article directories are not free advertising agencies. Sales pitches are blatant advertisements. The only time a company name is acceptable in the title of an article or in the body of an article is if it is compared to another company(s) as in a contrast/comparison article or if it is performed as a third party review/report. Otherwise, this type of information goes only in the ‘About’ or ‘Resource Box’ area, as well as any resource links.
Articles best received by your/our readers and editors are those that: Instruct (about your niche), as in ‘How To’… or ‘Ten Ways To…’ etc.; Humor (about your niche) or Entertainment (about your niche). These will get you a better response than any ad you can dream of or pay for. Pay it forward…they will come! If your article does none of this, it will be perceived as a cheeky and rejected advertisement. If a person can’t learn or laugh or be entertained or gain anything from your article in any way, then you haven’t written a decent article for submission as far as this publisher is concerned.
Spelling checker
USE IT please! Many good articles get rejected because they forgot to use the spell checker. If there’s a word you think you should use, and yet spell check doesn’t see it your way… put an apostrophe on each side of the word. This shows that it is not in the dictionary as a word and/or is not necessarily spelled correctly… but is necessary for use as a clarification.
If you’re using a word as a plural and the spell checker doesn’t agree with you… drop the ‘s’ as it’s simply not needed; even if it sounds funny to you, it’s wrong to add the plural because it’s already plural without the added ‘s’ or ending.
Example: ‘Children’s’ is misspelled. The word ‘Children’ IS the plural form of child, not ‘of children’. This is apparently only acceptable for commercial reasons.
Title Score
Titles are typically not a complete sentence and therefore generally do not require punctuation. However, if the title is a question… a question mark must be used or you can use punctuation to emphasize points!
titles too long
This publisher often overlooks titles that are too long, and there are literally thousands of articles to choose from. So, if your article title seems like a chore to read, it will be skipped right away. This is a warning to those who think that more title content generates more “hits”: you won’t get more “hits” if you simply reject it. Keep your titles short and to the point. The resource box is for your references, not the title or body of the article.
Titles without capital letters
Article titles that are not correctly capitalized are simply rejected. If your article isn’t important enough for you to even capitalize the title correctly…then the editor won’t do it for you! If you are sure which words to capitalize and which not, then capitalize them all, problem solved.
spaces and spacing
Often this editor finds that paragraphs sometimes feel like huge mountains of information to conquer – articles too! Five to six line paragraphs are easy to read, more than that it starts to feel like work. Start a new paragraph! It’s okay if the next paragraph is on the same topic. White space is very important to your/our readers! If the paragraphs of your article (or the entire article for that matter), seem like “work” to read, readers will skip it, move on, and so will the reviewing editor.
Paragraph spacing and paragraph headings
Again, as mentioned above, white space is VERY important in your articles. Don’t make reading a chore! Put a space between your paragraph and any paragraph title!
Few realize that the average reader only reads at a 5th-7th grade level of literature. keep it simple
Speaking of keeping it simple… if you need to use longer or geeky words for your topic, don’t abbreviate them! If you do, please explain them fully as well, at least at the beginning of your article. Publishers don’t like too many abbreviations, as they can be confusing to their/our readers, as well as make you look like a lazy writer.
Punctuation and the plain text editor
Scoring is often confused during the transmission of your submission through the servers. Please use a plain text editor (such as ‘Notepad’) before submitting your article(s)… or stop using parentheses, exclamations, quotes, contractions, commas and apostrophes… (LOL) , since we often get distorted text. characters in their presentations in their places! Here’s an example of what it looks like when sent: the coffee room is here^@s, it@#ll, ‘ #/aWe the people… #/a… etc.
The use of contractions should be kept to a minimum for the above reasons: words like: is, no, can’t, doesn’t have, isn’t… etc. As publishers, we often have to replace these missing or garbled characters or reject the article…even if we like your article differently! Don’t be a lazy writer. Write the full words in their place, problem solved and article accepted!
Speaking of writing the whole words… this editor has noticed a recent increase in the use of ‘multi’ (just because it seems too difficult to write the next three letters… ‘ple’), with other words where it is inappropriate and is misspelled. Being a lazy writer can get your article rejected or returned for misspellings.
Do not use symbols in place of words, such as using the ampersand ‘&’ for the word ‘and’. One person submits good articles that he would accept if they didn’t use ‘&’ for the word ‘and’… but unfortunately… all of his articles are rejected simply for this reason.
dashes and slashes
Hyphens do not require spaces before or after them, single or double. The exception is in listings and article titles. Do not put spaces between hyphens and your words or numbers, or slashes or backslashes! Many are using a single hyphen where there are supposed to be double hyphens. The single hyphen is used to number and space the titles. Single hyphens are for listings and double hyphens are for additional explanations or comments.
Another misuse of the hyphen is the use of hyphens when parentheses are needed or must be used. Find this often in editing articles. These hyphens are not only used incorrectly, but should be double hyphens and not single hyphens anyway, again with no spaces on either side.
apostrophes and quotation marks
Many times, editing, apostrophes, and quotation marks are incorrectly used in place of each other. If it is a direct quote, book, song, and/or other types of titles in your article, they require quotation marks, not apostrophes. There are people who always use quotes to distinguish ‘singularized’ words for emphasis just like ‘singularized’, which requires apostrophes, not quotes.
Another thing that confuses writers is when dot goes between quotes and when it goes outside of quotes. Again, if it is a direct quote (same as above), the punctuation goes inside the quotation marks. Otherwise, the punctuation comes out of the quotation marks.
I hope you find this helpful!