Sometimes when you copy and paste from external sites or platforms, like Microsoft Word or Google Docs, you might have text font or styling that doesn’t work in the HackerNoon editor (no wingdings allowed here).

If you simply copy paste and hit the submit button, your piece might be missing headings, bulleted lists, and even line breaks. Our editors will do their best to fix this for you, but if we look at a post and it’s completely broken to the point it’ll take us over 20 minutes to fix it, we will reject it and ask you to edit your story before submitting it.

Editing Protocol Index:

1. Editing Protocol Overview

   1. Second Human Rule

      1. Verified Writers

   2. Time to Review

2. Standards of Quality

   1. Originality Score
   2. 6 Ws Score
   3. Objectivity in ranked listicles
   4. Unranked listicles
   5. Actionable advice

3. Red Flags

   1. Subject Matter

      1. Subject matter saturation

   2. Plagiarism

   3. Sources and Citations

   4. Formatting is bad or broken

   5. Grammar level: gibberish

   6. Story is Too Short

4. Backlink Rules & Guidelines

   1. Backlink Limits

   2. Backlink quality and diversity

      1. Diversity of sources
      2. Internal linking
      3. Changing links

   3. Reposting and Canonical Linking

      1. Canonical links to company domain
      2. Canonical links to blog networks or social networks