Every site you submit articles to may have different editorial style guides. And as we have discussed before, having a great title can make all the difference in the world when it comes to your success. But even a catchy title needs to follow some basic guidelines.

Here are some helpful tips to use when crafting your titles to help you get your articles accepted more quickly:

Double-check spelling and word usage in your article title.

Do not put a period at the end of your article title.

All colons (:) and semicolons (;), long and medium dashes, pipes (|), and slashes (/) are to be replaced  with two short dashes (–), or changed to word equivalents.

Ampersands (&) and parentheses () are allowed.

Quotation marks are allowed to emphasize a part of   a title, but not the entire title. Please remove quotes  around the entire article as they are superfluous and of no benefit to the author or reader.

Never put an article number in the title of an article, such as: Dog Grooming Tips-Article #3

Never purposefully use commonly misspelled words in your article title to try and gain traffic from people who mistakenly misspell words in their searches. It’s sneaky and will ruin your credibility as an expert author.

Never put a year or date in the title of an article. This greatly reduces the “shelf-life” and marketability of your article.