The Innovation Submission and Design Guide
By: Esat Artug
Tags: Innovation, Entrepreneurship, Sustainability, Creativity, Design

2. Formatting

Medium has published a great guide on how to format your title.

At The Innovation, the sequence of the three first element the reader sees when opening your article is this: (1) Title, (2) Subtitle, (3) Cover Image

Please keep them in the right order.

Here is an example of the right sequence of title, subtitle, and cover image we’re looking for:

Image by Author

Title

Only the first line of the story is considered the title. Select the text and click the large “T” icon to format the title.

Capitalize your title, meaning minor words are typed in lower case with all major words being capitalized. You can use Title Case Converter to adjust titles.

Write quality headlines. Here are some tips from Medium:

Be specific. Don’t leave the reader to guess what your piece is about.

Don’t leave the reader to guess what your piece is about. Spark interest. Engage the reader’s interest by highlighting what’s unique about your piece.

Engage the reader’s interest by highlighting what’s unique about your piece. Be clear. Avoid confusing terms, general statements, or “insider” jargon.

Avoid confusing terms, general statements, or “insider” jargon. Be clean. Watch out for typos in your headlines and please don’t use profanity.

Watch out for typos in your headlines and please don’t use profanity. Go for reads, not clicks. Steer clear of clickbait headlines — tropes like “one weird thing” or using “this/that” to get the reader to click. Make sure your story backs up the claim in the headline.

Steer clear of clickbait headlines — tropes like “one weird thing” or using “this/that” to get the reader to click. Make sure your story backs up the claim in the headline. Bigger is not better. Make sure the caps lock is off. No all-caps titles.

Here are a few great headline examples:

How To Become Ridiculously Self-Aware In 20 Minutes

How to Figure Out What the Hell You Want to Do With Your Life

9 Business Lessons I Learned Making $100,000 Online in the Past 3 Years

My Powerful 1-Hour Routine for Quick Success on Medium

Elon Musk Wants You To Merge With Your Technology

Here are a few not-so-great headlines:

On Headlines

Mom

To Be a Perfect Person, Do This One Simple Thing

Subtitle

Writing directly below the title is considered the subtitle. Select the text and click the small “T” icon to format the subtitle.

For your subtitle, use normal sentence case: Only capitalize the first word and any proper nouns

Here is an example of a title and subtitle format we’re looking for:

Image by Author

Please do NOT include a link in the title and subtitle

Please do NOT write your title and subtitle with all capital letters

Submissions must have a clear and descriptive title and subtitle — they’re the first thing a user sees when viewing a story.

Please keep your title, subtitle, and cover image in the right order

You can use Title Case Converter to adjust titles and subtitles

Note: Changing a title or subtitle in the content of an article does not ensure it updates the SEO title and description. Be sure to update in both places. This article helps clarify Medium’s SEO options and settings.

Cover images

In The Innovation, all stories have a cover image that follows the title and subtitle.

Always include a high-resolution image at the top of a story under your headline. This has the following benefits:

When people share your story on social media, it will be more prominent in news feeds, making people more likely to click on it. It will look better in Medium’s own news feeds. Humans are visual creatures and click on images.

All images should be as wide as the text body of your article and ideally offer bigger sizes when you click on them in the editor — However, If you have a chart that is hard to read when it’s small, go bigger

Don’t use the widescreen or expanded formatting for images — keep them all in body-width, as shown in the example:

Image by Author

Technically as a writer, you are liable for copyright infringement, and Medium is not. The simplest way to attribute an image is to put the words “Image credit” below an image and link this text to its original source.

When you use an image, make sure you have the right to use it. If you are using an image you don’t have the rights to, that’s a copyright violation and disqualifies your story from curation.

All images in your article must show proper attribution to their respective source. Here is an example:

Photo by Jonas Jacobsson on Unsplash

Please credit all images properly as “Photo by,” “Image via” or otherwise doesn’t matter as much as naming the actual source of the image and linking to it.

Whenever you’re using your own pictures, simply add “Image by Author, Picture by Author, Image Courtesy of the Author, or Screenshot by Author” as the caption.

If you’re looking for images you can safely use without permission, check out Pexels, Unsplash, or search Google for images labeled for Creative Commons licenses.

Please make sure you actually have permission to use the image

have permission to use the image Stick with a simple, relevant image that relates to the main message or core theme of your post.

Section headings

When possible, submissions should be split into well-organized sections using correctly formatted section headings.

In every post, you should only have one “Heading 1,″ your post title. Use “Heading 2” for the main subheadings that support the title of your post. If you use “Heading 3,” those subheadings should support the “Heading 2” topics they’re under.

Here’s an outline for properly formatted headings:

Image by Author

Creating lists

Bullet Points — To begin a bulleted list, go to a new line, type in a dash (-) or asterisk (*), and press Space. Next, you start typing your first item. Once you hit Enter on your keyboard, the list will be reformatted for you automatically.

Numbered List — To begin a numbered list, go to a new line, type in 1. (numeral one, period), and press the space bar on your keyboard. The list will automatically add subsequent numbers when you hit Enter on the keyboard.

Mentioning Medium users

Type “@” and then the name of the person you want to mention. Mentioning someone will link to their profile and send them a notification when you publish.

Image alt text

This text helps screen-reading tools describe images to visually impaired readers and allows search engines to better crawl and rank your website.

Whether or not you perform SEO for your Medium articles, optimizing your article’s image alt text is your ticket to creating a better user experience for your visitors, no matter how they first found you.

How to Add Alt Text to Your Medium Article Images:

For an existing article, click the “edit story” tab in the upper right-hand corner. Click on the image you wish to add alt text to. Click on the “Alt-text” button. Write a brief description of this image for readers with visual impairments or to optimize SEO. Click the “save” button and you are done.

Set image focal point

You can set a focal point on your image to crop your images better for social media thumbnails and preview images on Medium.

How to Set a Focal Point on Your Featured Image: