Rejected for Proper Nouns and Capitalization?

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   Kain 360posted 21 months ago

   I never had too many problems getting my articles transferred to the niche sites in the past 2 years, but sometimes I make typos or have to italicize or unbold something. The standards apparently are much more strict (professional I guess) and specific because editors are asking me to italicize certain words or edit other things (some of which are ambiguous to me).
   
   I'm running into a problem. Certain words in the English language are not normally capitalized, but some regular words are capitalized in videogames because they refer to specific stats, names of fictional people, or fictional towns etc. For example, I capitalized words like Strength & Engineering because they are stats that become proper nouns.
   
   Thing is, I am unsure if I was rejected for capitalizing certain words. I'm not sure if I should keep certain words capitalized or not. Within the games, they are basically proper nouns, but outside of that they are not.
   
   I'm often afraid to resubmit my hubs because of ambiguity. That and my eyes sometimes fail too see mistakes or typos. Eye strain has been an issue for me lately lol.
   
   Anyway, what should I do to rectify situations like this?

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      TIMETRAVELER2posted 21 months agoin reply to this

      You might want to discuss this issue with the team and ask for their best advice.

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         Kain 360posted 21 months agoin reply to this

         The Hubpages staff themselves? Technically, I could just  not capitalize the words because it would not affect the reading content, but I don't yet.
         
         Quite frankly, I am unaware of how the editing process on Hubpages works. Do they hire people all over the country or are people working directly with the hubpages staff in California? Is it a large quantity of editors? Seems to me that a lot of content would get submitted for the niche sites. Forgive my ignorance, for I am just a writer here.
         
         Of course, I understand this website has changed dramatically since the 2010-2011 era. I remember before the hubpages earnings program was implemented. That was a life changer for one of my old accounts. Then the Google Algorithms came & negatively affected my somewhat ephemeral success.
         
         It seems like most of the folk in these forums are veteran users or brand new people that don't know what's going on lol! I see names that I saw 5-10 years ago, but some of the huge hub contributors are gone.

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      OldRosesposted 21 months agoin reply to this

      You have to understand that the staff that are editing our hubs are professional editors with no expertise in our own fields.  I write gardening hubs.  The horticulture field has its own "lingo", words and phrases that are unique to the field but are considered improper English.  I can't tell you how many emails I have sent to the editorial team explaining why my usage is correct and their "corrections" are incorrect.  It's tedious, but it's the only way to get your hubs moved to the niche sites.  Just keep emailing and explaining the videogame terms that they want to "correct".  They are not experts in video games (or gardening).  They are experts in spelling and grammar.  You just need to educate them.  They are willing to learn.

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         Kain 360posted 21 months agoin reply to this

         Yes, some niches have unconventional words. I never really had that problem with fitness or nutrition topics because they did not have fantasy words or unique lingo etc. I wrote on Constant Content before. Hubpages is starting to remind more and more of Constant Content since they got professional editors.
         
         I don't understand, though. Are these professional editors working from San Francisco California where Hubpages is? I don't know how many people write for HubPages as of 2019, but I'd imagine a lot content is uploaded frequently. I used to use that hub hopping feature back in the day lol.

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   psycheskinnerposted 21 months ago

   Post the reason given for rejection and the link to the hub--no way to tell, otherwise

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      Kain 360posted 21 months agoin reply to this

      It's multiple hubs, but I get text formatting & spelling/grammar (on some). Originally, I was getting approved (2017-2018) when I did NOT italicize or use quotations for videogame titles, but not now. That's an easy fix, though.
      
      One of them I got:
      
      1. Please italicize all game mentions throughout the article. In your summary/bio, main title, captions, and H2s, titles should be in quotations.
      
      2. Be sure that all H2s are in APA formatting. (https://capitalizemytitle.com/)
      
      3. Add a credible author bio
      
      4. Add a cover photo
      
      5. Add an H3 in the opening paragraphs to break up the text.
      
      When I write a hub, I usually place text first, then a photograph. By cover photo, I'm assuming they mean placing the photo before the paragraphs? I was not asked to do that on all my hubs.

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         samanthacubbisonposted 21 months agoin reply to this

         Hi there,
         
         A Network Site's standards and style guide are always changing, which may explain the formatting request.
         
         We ask that cover photos (at the top of article) are added so that the article preview has a related image, rather than a random stock image. This looks better and attracts more readers.
         
         In terms of the capitalization, it looks like it is just referring to the H2s (Heading 2s), and not necessarily the rest of the article. The link provided in that message is a great resource to check that your headings are all in proper APA formatting. H2/3s can be written in both APA or sentence case, but it's important to choose one.

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            Kain 360posted 21 months agoin reply to this

            Oh, well some standards have definitely changed then.
            
            So is it absolutely necessary for every single hub to have a photo at the top? Or only ones where the editor requests it?

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               samanthacubbisonposted 21 months agoin reply to this

               We ask that all authors add cover photos to their articles on Network Sites because it makes the page look better and draws more attention.

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                  Kain 360posted 21 months agoin reply to this

                  All right then. I changed them all last night. I hope it really does draw more attention because I've had successful hubs despite a cover before. Many years ago on an old account, I used to always use cover photos, but thought it was wrong to use them on every hub.

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   Will Apseposted 21 months ago

   We can write all headings in sentence case? That is new. UK folk would appreciate that. APA is rather shouty.

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      samanthacubbisonposted 21 months agoin reply to this

      Not so fast, Will! I mean that if you write out an H3 in sentence case (period and all), that is technically "correct" but we usually advise against it. H2s should always be in APA.
      
      Sorry if that was confusing. I was referring to this author's particular article.

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   Kain 360posted 21 months ago

   UPDATE: The editor told me that the proper nouns I used were fine (a relief). The issue was with H2/H3 in APA only. I must be capitalizing or lower casing something wrong I guess.
   
   I got half of my hubs approved now. But man, I really need to get this right! I want to move on and continue to work on more hubs. One of my recent hubs is almost 2000 words! I usually try to be in the 800-1200 range, though.
   
   Also, sometimes I add "white spaces" by accident or adds an extra article (like and or a). I really need 20/10 vision to find typos I swear!

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      samanthacubbisonposted 21 months agoin reply to this

      Glad you've figured it out! It's easy to overlook white space, so we recommend that you scan the article in preview mode.

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         OldRosesposted 21 months agoin reply to this

         I love preview mode!  In prevew mode I pick up a lot of errors in formatting, spelling and grammar that I didn't see when I originally wrote the hub in Word then copy and pasted into edit mode.

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            samanthacubbisonposted 21 months agoin reply to this

            Yep! When moving text from Word to a text capsule, spacing and other formatting issues may arise. That's why it's so important to check!

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            Kain 360posted 21 months agoin reply to this

            I always write on hubpages itself. I am working on a novel in a free version of something like word, though.
            
            Hubpages seems to run pretty good when I'm typing. I get occasional glitches where something does not load, but that's probably because I'm using an older laptop with windows 7. Eventually, I'm going to get a new laptop, but HubPages runs better than most other websites for some reason.

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               OldRosesposted 21 months agoin reply to this

               I use Word so that I have copies of all of my hubs saved on my Cloud drive.

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                  Kain 360posted 21 months agoin reply to this

                  I might do that if I ever write fitness or nutrition content on this hubpages account. When I wrote for Constant Content, I saved my content to a USB. But I sold full-rights to articles, so I would not be able to use them online.

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               samanthacubbisonposted 21 months agoin reply to this

               @Kain 360, it's because we're the best!

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