Outstanding article, David... as usual. Thanks for the great reminders and suggestions.

I'd like to remind folks of two other things...

1. Use a spelling checker...

2. Not everything on the internet or in books is correct...

The first item above should go without saying. Nothing destroys the credibility of what you're trying to do quicker than a plethora of spelling errors. Everyone will forgive 1 or 2 spelling errors in an article, but not 10 in the first paragraph. Further, if you're writing on a predominately English site and English is a second language that you're not very good at, you may want to have someone review your work before you publish. I know that I wouldn't attempt to write in any foreign language without a severe review by a person who spoke the language as a primary language.

The second item is important, as well. Just because some author, even well published and popular authors, have an article on the internet or in a book, it doesn't guarantee that the methods in the article are correct. The old saying that "One experiment is worth more than one thousand expert opinions" still holds true. If you're going to rely on or cite someone else's work to make your point, then you really need to make sure that you actually test the methods in that other person's work before you include them in your article.