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BASIC WRITING RULES
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 Headline: Ensure your headline contains the main keywords of your story and is free of plagiarism.
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i) Your headlines should generally be between six to 15 words long. Write your headlines in present tense and in the active voice.

ii) Capitalize the principal words in your headlines (including the first and last words as well as all words more than four letters long) unless they are usually spelt without capitalization (i.e. iPhone).

iii) Do not capitalize "a" "an" "and" as well as prepositions or conjuctions, unless they are more than four letters long.

iv) Always begin your headline with the keyword.

v) Always write your headlines the active voice - not passive.
For example, PASSIVE: 'The Grand Canyon Attracted Thousands of Visitors Last Quarter' ACTIVE: 'The Grand Canyon Attracts Thousands of Visitors'

vi) Use a comma (,) to symbolize 'and' in your headlines (i.e. China, US Join Global Cyberterrorism Bureau). Use a colon (:) to represent 'according to' or 'says' in your headline ('The President is not Immune from Corruption: Attorney General'). Also, you can use a semi-colon to seperate two ideas in your headline (Apple Reports $90m Profit in 2014; Upgraded iPhone 6 Leaks Ahead of Official Release Date).

vii) Add G-Keywords in headline and body.

viii) Single quotation whenever you include titles of movies and games
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Content: Every article you upload should be at least 500 words long. Do not include your personal opinions in a news story, and do not include any unsupported claims.

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i) Ensure your article takes a unique angle from other published stories about the same topic.

ii) Know what you intend to communicate before writing, and use the inverted pyramid style to present your information in a neutral, clear and accurate manner.

iii) Cite between three to five credible sources in your stories. When citing your sources, please write the name of the publication, i.e. "According to China Topix," or "China Topix has reported that..." Don't forget to hyperlink your sources. NEVER cite Wikipedia or imDB as a source in your story.

iv) Ensure to use G-keyword at least three times in your story. Supporting keywords can be inserted in subheadings.

v) NEVER include subjective statements or unsupported claims in your stories. Strive to maintain a high level of professionalism.
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 Contractions and Abbreviations: Don't use any contractions. Use only familiar abbreviations.
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i) Never use contractions (such as "Don't" "Won't" or "Shouldn't"), rather spell out what you are trying to say (i.e. "Do not" "Would not" "Should not").

ii) Capitalize the letters of any acronym you write (i.e. EU, UN, NASA). Spell out the accronym once and subsequently you can use the acronym in your text.

iii) No need to include the current year in your story unless, the incident happened in the previous years. (e.g. May 20, 2013).

iv) Never abbreviate the name of any country in your story (unless the US and UK).

v) When writing percentages, write in numbers with percentage symbol e.g.: 4%, 5% and etc.

vi) You can abbreviate the words "street" "boulevard" and "avenue" only after a numbered address. If they appear alone, never abbreviate these words.
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Dates, Numbers, Time and Addresses: Write dates, names, numbers and the time according to these instructions.
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i) You can abbreviate the name of a month only if it is more than six letters long. Never abbreviate the name of a month if it is not preceding a date.

ii) When writing a date, seperate the month and the date from the year with a comma, (i.e. May 13, 2013). Never use "th" "st" or "nd" at the end of dates, just write the number (i.e. June 2,). If you are writing about a date in the same year we're in (i.e 2015), there's no need to also write the year.(i.e May 13. 2015), you can just write the date as (May 13,).

iii) Mention year if it is previous and/or upcoming (e.g. 1916. 1990, 2001, 2022); Don't mention year if you are talking about the present (2020)

iv) Never use "today" "yesterday" or "tomorrow" in your stories, use dates instead.

v) Spell out all numbers from one to nine, but write out all numbers from 10 and above. Spell out any number that begins a sentence.

vi) Write the time as "1:00 a.m." Never write the time as "1:00 a.m. today." Instead write it as "1:00 a.m. Thursday."

vii) Always write the time in numbers, except midnight and noon.

viii) Use numerals for all amounts between $1 and $999,999, but spell out all figures from "1 million' and above.

ix) When writing ranks, use "No. 1," and not "#1."

x) When writing an address, write the house number, followed by the street name, (i.e. 707 Hardwood St.).
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 Names and Age: Make sure you represent people's names and their official titles accurately in your stories.

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i) Always ensure that you spell the names of people accurately in your stories.

ii) Make sure you capitalize a formal title if it precedes a person's name (i.e. President Barack Obama). However, if it is standing along in a sentence,
it can be in lower case (i.e. the president of the golfing association...).

iii) After mentioning a person's full name once in your story, use their surnames whenever you are referring to them in the same story.

iv) There are two acceptable ways of writing a person's age in your stories, either you write "an 8 years old boy" or "an 8-year-old boy."
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Italics: Only use italics for emphasis.
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 i) If you want to emphasize something in your story, use italics instead of capital letters.
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SEO Supporters: Use SEO supporters to keep your content interesting and avoid repeating a person's name too much.
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i) When writing about an actor, author or anyone with a catalogue of works. For actors, you can refer to them with their movies and for authors, with with their books. For example, when writing about R.R. Tolkien, it would make sense to refer to him at least once in your story as "the author of the highly rated 'Lord of the Rings' series."
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 Punctuation: Make sure all the stories you write are properly punctuated.

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i) Use double quotation marks when citing a phrase/sentence someone has said in your title.

ii) Use single quotation marks around the titles of books, television shows, films, computer games, works of art, lectures and speeches.

iii) When writing a quote, any punctuations at the end should be inside the quotation mark
(i.e. "This is the correct way to do it." not "This is not the correct way to do it".

iv) Use hyphens to connects words in a compund adjective ('weather-worn shoes'). Use a semi-colon to seperate a phrase that includes a series of commas (i.e. Tampa, Fla.; Long Beach, LA; Austin, Texas).
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Profanity: Never use profane words in your stories. If you must do so, use it only in a quote and use asterix to blot out some of the letters of the word.
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i) Never use profane words in your stories, even in quotation marks. If you must use profanity, you must blot out some of the letters of the profane word
(for example, bitch would be written as b***h).
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Plagiarism: Ensure that you story is not plagiarised before you submit it to the editor. Use this website (http://smallseotools.com/plagiarism-checker/) to check your story for plagiarism.

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i) Ensure all the articles you upload are free of plagiarism. Remember to check your stories for plagiarism after you finish writing.

ii) Remove all quotes from your story before you check it for plagiarism. Quotations may make your story appear plagiarised. It is important not to stuff your story with quotes. As much as possible, paraphrase rather than quote. Reserve quotations for very important statements.
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 Accuracy and Defamation: Ensure your story is accurate and does not present someone in a negative or untruthful way.

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i) It is extremely important that you verify all the information you present in your stories from more than one source.
If you happen to find one source saying something which you think should appear in your story, cite the source appropriately.

ii) Do not write your stories in a way that damages someone's character.
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Game, Movie, and Book titles, and Subheadings
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i.) Italicized game, movie, and book title whenever you mention it in the body.
ii.) BOLD each subheading.
iii.) Insert keywords in subheadings. As much as possible, it should be long-tail keywords. Ideally, your subheadings should be the common phrases or keywords that most users type in Google.
iv.) Add related articles with hyperlink in the body of your article. Examples:

SEE ALSO: 'The Sims 4' To Add Vampires, Forgotten Hollow World And Creepy Objects In Upcoming Game Pack

ALSO READ: 'Pokemon Go' Special Research Tasks and How the Game Revived Augmented Reality
*Note: These should be written in BOLD.
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