Hit confirming

Sick of seeing your specials get blocked? Sick of getting hurt when that happens? Throw some sort of normal move first. If the normal hits, cancel it into the special of your choice. If the normal move gets blocked, don't throw the special. You'd be surprised at how much more damage you'll give, and how much less damage you'll take once you stop throwing out random special moves. You don't need 30-hit combos to succeed in this game. 2-3 hits is plenty if you can do it consistently.

Good examples of hit confirms:
Any shoto: jab, Shoryuken. Press down-forward + LP twice, and it'll come out as LP + shoryuken.

Guile: crouching MP, HK Flash Kick.
Balrog: crouching MP, headbutt or dash straight.

Zangief: crouching jab, lariat.

Early trials for most characters show some hit confirms, too.

I always go through the whole Shoryuken motion when I do punch -> Shoryuken attack. Just feels more natural than hitting DF twice.

That works too. For me, anything involving Z's or quarter circles is a foreign language. So I need to break it down into idiot-proof chunks.