Medium Post Formatting Guide
By: Cody Towstik
Tags: Help, Guides And Tutorials, Features, Médium, Documentation

Additional Elements

Lists

There are two styles of lists. This style of list is created by typing an asterisk (*) and Space

Lists can not be nested, and only have one level.

This style of list is created by typing 1 + period (.) and Space It automatically increments. If you press enter and the list item is empty, the list stops incrementing and the empty line disappears. Numbered lists cannot be continued after a section break or between images. If you press Enter after a list item in the middle, you can insert empty lines, but they are automatically removed during the publish process.

Code

Native inline code and code blocks do not have any syntax highlighting. To get syntax highlighting, you must use an embed provider.

Medium does not allow users to insert and run scripts into the site for security and privacy reasons. Medium Docs

You can inline code by typing a backtick (`) and then typing your code. Press backtick again to exit out of inline code editing mode, or move your cursor out with the mouse or arrow keys.

To enter inline code editing mode, there` needs` to` be a space before the backtick before you put the backtick.

To make existing text inline code, highlight it and press backtick . To use a backtick in code, use this method `` to wrap existing backticks.

Code blocks can be made by typing three backticks (```) in a row, or using the shortcut ctrl + alt + 6

This is a code block. It uses a monospaced font called Menlo, with a fallback to Monaco. New lines are automatically generated when you press enter, and there is the same amount of space between new lines and wrapped text. The previous line wraps.

These two do not. There can be multiple blank lines in code blocks.

Dropcaps

Drop caps can be added to a paragraph by selecting an entire paragraph and clicking on the drop caps icon in the formatting menu. A drop cap takes up two full lines of height. On mobile, they appear as regular text.

A custom image can be used as a drop cap instead by clicking on the drop cap so it has a green border. The emoji on the left was an A drop cap. The behavior for draggin an image is a little wonky. Just make sure your drop cap is selected and try to drag the image file over it. On mobile, since dropcaps don’t appear, the letter you replaced the image with will be rendered instead.

Notice how the emoji drop cap takes up four lines of height (on my screen) rather than two. If you delete a drop cap, typing a capital letter at the start of that line will make the new letter the drop cap.

A fancy letter as a drop cap could add some pizzaz. Using a png image with a transparent background will probably work best, as it will work well with Dark Mode (if the desktop version ever gets dark mode).

You can use any image type as a drop cap, even a gif .

This is a gif drop cap.

This is an image formatted to wrap text.

This is an image of the same gif .

Dashes

Pressing the hiphen (-) button twice in a row will generate — a dash.

You can’t put — additional — spacing after a dash.

Pairs of dashes will continue to be converted into dashes — — —

Emojis 😜

Medium supports the same emoji syntax as services like GitHub and Slack. Here is a cheat sheet for all available emojis. They can appear in any Header or Subheader, even the main Title and Subtitle.

To add an emoji, type colon (:) and the name of your favorite emoji — :star .

I’d give this article a rating of ⭐ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️.

You can copy and paste emojis to quickly make duplicates.

Superscript

Medium supports superscript for numbers only. To output a number, such as 6⁷ just type in 6^7 , words⁵ can have numeric superscripts too using words^5 .

The number will continue to be superscripted as long as you don’t add a non-numeric character, like a space, special character, or letter.

You can click back into a superscript⁵⁴ ⁴⁴⁵ ⁴ number and add spaces in between, or additonal numbers.

If you delete the word¹²³ that has superscripts, you can put a space or dash before the superscript — ⁵⁵⁵.

Mentions

Mention someone by typing @name or @username . The tag will be replaced with their name — Cody Towstik.

Tagged users will get a notification after you publish.

‘Edit Later’ Reminder

Including the characters TK anywhere on a line will leave a TK reminder. It adds a little TK icon to the left of the line and serves as a reminder to the author to come back and make a future change.

Medium will warn you if there are any remaining TK reminders left before you publish.

Extras

Spacing

You can make a single-spaced line break by going to the end of the line and pressing Shift + Enter at the same time. This is only available on desktop.

Like.

This.

There.

Is.

Less.

Space.

Between.

Lines.

Extra white space is collapsed when your article is published, so make sure to take a look at it after. If you have multiple blank new lines or a list with an empty element, all of that will be removed.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Offical docs

You can pop up the help menu while editing using ctrl + ? which lists some of the relevant shortcuts at the bottom of your screen.

Use ctrl + shift + / to get ctrl + ? .

Footnotes

¹Medium doesn’t support footnotes

²But you can use superscript

³And use shift + enter to mock footnotes at the bottom of your post.

Math

Medium doesn’t support math, but there is a user guide on using Unicode characters for maths on Medium.

Since medium uses Embed.ly for their embeds, you could use one of the existing embeds that support LaTeX to render complex math.

Word Count

Select a portion of text, or the entire article with ctrl + a , and a word count will appear in the top left.

Shared Draft

You can share a draft with another user so they can edit add notes. If you add notes to another users article, you will get a thank you note at the bottom of the article at the time of publish.

If you’d rather not be mentioned, click Hide near your mention to hide it for other readers.