How to Format Your Title, Subtitle, and Image for Your Medium Article
By: Michelle Loucadoux
Tags: Formatting, Writing, Editing, Writing Tips, Editing And Proofreading

How to Format Your Title, Subtitle, and Image for Your Medium Article

Photo by Mario Gogh on Unsplash

Editors love to read your writing. They love to hear your stories, learn new things from you, and share your insights with the world. What don’t they love to do? Cut, paste, reformat, search the internet for missing captions, capitalize, divide 15-line paragraphs into readable chunks, and make your dang display title and subtitle match the ones on your story.

The more time we spend doing this kind of thing, the less time we have to read your fantastic work. I have seen so many good articles come through with so many formatting issues that we can’t accept them. And that, my friends, makes me sad.

Most publications have a comprehensive set of submission guidelines painstakingly detailed by their team, so if you want to know more about what kind of content they need or if you want more formatting information, they usually have got you covered. This article is the quick and dirty guide to how to get your piece through the first Great Riddle Sphinx gate on your journey toward attainment of the Southern Oracle (yes, that reference totally dated me).

So, in the interest of making sure we’re all on the same virtual page and that we can make sure your work shines, here is your comprehensive guide to formatting your article for most Medium Publications.

Title

Titles are important. I recommend you spend a good amount of time creating your titles (and check the submission guide for some good examples). As far as formatting, here are ways to ensure your title is correctly formatted.

Put your title first. At the top of the page. BEFORE your image.

Your title should say “Title” next to it if it is correctly formatted.

If your title does not look like the graphic above, just highlight the text and click the large T.

All titles should be in title case. In title case capitalization, the main words are capitalized and the minor words are lowercase. An easy way to ensure your title is correct is to put it into the title case converter at www.titlecase.com.

DONE! If you do these things, your title will be formatted correctly.

Subtitle

Every article that is published in The Innovation must have a subtitle. If it doesn’t have one, we are very likely to politely refuse your article. Here are three things to know about your subtitle:

It must be directly under your title and should be different from your title. If the title is “How to Become a Sky Diver”, your subtitle should not be, “Learning how to skydive.” (Incidentally, I’d recommend a lesson in person instead of reading an article about this.)

Your subtitle should be in sentence case. NOT title case. 15 seconds to fix the case of one subtitle times 100 submissions per day times 7 days per week means we would spend almost 3 hours per week fixing subtitle cases .

. Make sure your subtitle is formatted as a subtitle. After you write your sentence, highlight the whole thing and click the little t. Medium will then automatically format what is highlighted as a subtitle.

Image

Your image is an important part of getting viewers to read your article. If you don’t have the rights to your image and/or you don’t properly credit the photographer or source, your article may be rejected. (Additionally, please don’t use screenshots unless it is of your own design or work.) Here are two things to know about formatting your image:

Your image should appear directly below your subtitle. You may choose to use one of these three image options (do not choose the inline option, please).

You should use the caption below the image to (at minimum) credit the photographer. If you took the image or if it’s a screenshot, it’s appropriate to write, “Screenshot: Author” or “Photo: Author.”

Screenshot: Author

One more important thing

Before you submit an article, your display title and subtitle MUST match your piece. If you have changed your title or subtitle, these are often different. If they’re different, we don’t know which titles you want! Here’s how to make sure they match up:

Click the three dots at the upper right-hand corner of your page.

Select “Change display title/subtitle” from the drop-down menu.