Sitecore Tip: Content Author minimum roles

 At a bare minimum, you want your content authors to have these OOTB roles: 

• sitecore\Sitecore Client Advanced Publishing
• sitecore\Sitecore Client Designing
• sitecore\Sitecore Client Authoring

You should also have custom roles to further classify your content authors, e.g.: 

• Site Owner (Content Author "admin" for a specific site) 
• Workflow Approver/Reader (to push/approve items through workflows)
• etc