Medium Formatting Guidelines for Writers — Make Your Writing The Best It Can Be (2022)

The Orange Journal is now accepting new and seasoned writers to join a fiercely growing personal development publication.

Updated May 24th, 2022

If an editor has referred you to this article in a private note, we will give you keywords which need correction. Simply scroll down to the table of contents and click on the words we have mentioned in your private note.

This will bring you to the section you need help with and will save you time.

As of April 1st, 2022, editors provide one critique per submission to maintain quality control and the ability to manage the publication effectively.

That means if proper edits are not made within one critique, the piece will not be accepted.

Please keep in mind this is more than most publications will offer.

We appreciate your respect for the publication and our time.

If something is unclear, please let me know asap and I will correct it.

Best,
🆂🆄🆉🍊

So you want to write on Medium and you want to contribute to The Orange Journal? Welcome, writer to the formatting guidelines that will take your writing to the next level. Yes, I am calling you a writer! I’ll be honest, it took me far too long to refer to myself as one, because I thought that if I wasn’t making 6-figures, then it didn’t count…

If there’s anything I’ve learned from writing, and I have learned a lot…if you write, you are a writer — plain and simple.

I am so honored that newbies on Medium wish to find a home in my publication, and I want to provide thorough formatting guidelines. The table of contents is clickable and will take you to that section. Take what you need and leave the rest from these Medium formatting guidelines.

Feel free to bookmark this article to your “Read later” list. I am constantly updating it as I learn more about the platform. Yes, I am still learning, even two years in! 🍊

Table of Contents: Easily search for what you need--it's clickable!
  ∘ Title
  ∘ Don’ts to Remember for your Title
  ∘ Subtitles Under Title
  ∘ Subtitles Within Body Text
  ∘ Separator
  ∘ Image
  ∘ Add Multiple Pictures at Once
  ∘ Alternative Text for Images
  ∘ Insert Link
  ∘ Spacing
  ∘ Sentence Structure Variation
  ∘ Drop Cap
  ∘ Quoting
  ∘ Bullet Points
  ∘ Length
  ∘ Tags
  ∘ Submitting Drafts
  ∘ Embeds
  ∘ Helpful AI
  ∘ SEO Title and SEO Description
  ∘ Proofread!
  ∘ Promote Yourself
  ∘ How to Add Your Story to The Orange Journal for Submission

(Not in TOC: Submission Guidelines.)

This will cut down editing time for me and the other lovely editors at TOJ

• Alessia May
• The Sober Vegan Yogi
• Nicole Dake

It will also increase your chance of curation, distribution, and being featured via the “pinning” feature.

Proper formatting will also grant you the highest chance of having a long shelf-life on Medium.

Also, if you would like to invest in a Medium subscription, please do consider signing up with my referral link at no additional cost to you.

If you want to make money here, get a membership now. Don’t wait.

Without further ado…

Formatting Basics

Title

Every single article must have a title. This title should be engaging, not old and tired advice that we all know. Shoot for 6–12 words. The title goes in title case. Use this free title case converter website to help you.

Dig a little deeper and read this article on Title Case

Don’ts to Remember for your Title

• Don’t put a link in your title.
• Don’t add a period.
• Do not use all caps.
• And for heaven’s sake, do not engage in clickbait. That causes distrust among readers and is not the way to build your following on this platform. Further, clickbait will never be accepted into TOJ.
• No quotations, either.

Subtitles Under Title

Every single article must have a subtitle. This is equally as important as the title. It should summarize what the reader should expect without giving any valuable nuggets of information or insight away too soon. Under title subtitles are written in sentence case. It looks like this. The subtitle can have a period at the end of it, but this isn’t necessary. You can include other punctuation at the end of your subtitle like a question mark or exclamation mark.

Highlight the sentence under your title, and hit the “small T” to make sure it becomes the subtitle.

To learn more about sentence case, read this article.

Subtitles Within Body Text

Many folks get confused when I say ‘subtitle in body’. The body text is not the title, not the subtitle underneath that. It is the main chunk of your writing — the body of your writing.

When to Use Title Case for Subtitle in Body Text

You will use subtitles to separate ideas within your article. As you can see, a body subtitle I used in this article is “Subtitles Within Body Text” written in title case. When you create a subtitle, highlight it and press the “small T.”

When to Use Sentence Case for Subtitle in Body Text

The only time you should use sentence case for your body subtitle is when your body subtitle is more than one line long. Otherwise, it will look like you’re shouting.

Here is an example.

I never believed what she told me because she always had a hard time with lying.

If I chose to make the above^^^^a subtitle, I would leave it in sentence case.

Minimum Subtitles for TOJ Submissions

Nearly every article you send to TOJ should have at least one body subtitle. The only exception for this is short form + poetry.

Separator

Use a separator to break up ideas that are slightly different, yet related. Do not use the separator in the place of a subtitle. Use subtitles to break up sections and keep the reader engaged. Give them a reason to keep reading.

The separator looks like this.

When typing, you will see a plus sign that looks like +

The separator can be inserted by clicking on the image that looks like — —

Image

Every single article must have an image. Your image should be captivating and tasteful. It goes under the title and subtitle. Find images at Unsplash or Pexels. They are free to use. Cite them properly like this. Avoid excessive imagery. This is distracting to the reader and Medium does not favor it.

When you click share, it will say “Photo by ____ on____.” Copy and paste that into the caption bar as I did above. …

Sometimes, when you click share, it will not give you a direct link, so you need to do a little more work.

When you press share, you may see this.

There is a small square which is the copy button.

Highlight the name, and add to caption. Then write “on Unsplash” and copy the link. Highlight “Unsplash” in your caption and insert link.

Add Multiple Pictures at Once

If you want two or three images to appear next to each other, as they do below, simply upload them simultaneously. On my Mac, I hold shift to select multiple pictures and then just upload as I normally would.

Please refrain from adding an image immediately under your body subtitle. Medium does not favor this so I don’t permit it in TOJ.

Also, feel free to use your own personal photos or photos you edit in Canva. Just credit yourself.

Alternative Text for Images

To increase your ranking on Google, add alt text to every single image within your article. This can sometimes be time-consuming, but it is worth it. It’s important to be thorough with every single piece you produce on Medium.

(You never know where it will end up, or who will see it. Personally, my Medium portfolio has landed me many new clients. Attention to detail is never overlooked.)

Click on the image and click “alt text.” Write a brief description of what is happening in the photo.

Here is an example.

No one can see this alt-text.

“Alternative (Alt) Text is meant to convey the “why” of the image as it relates to the content of a document or webpage. It is read aloud to users by screen reader software, and it is indexed by search engines. It also displays on the page if the image fails to load…” — Harvard.edu

Insert Link

Highlight the word you want to hyperlink, and Medium will provide you with a popup. Choose the image that looks like two connecting links.

Spacing

Medium tends to favor reads that are separated by sufficient whitespace.

Three or four sentences per paragraph are ideal.

Each paragraph should never exceed five lines.

Add tasteful gifs from Giphy and/or images to break up the space on occasion.

Sentence Structure Variation

Do your best to avoid fragments as well as run-on sentences. Whenever you can use simple words to get your point across, do that. Your sentence should not exceed more than two lines. If it does, break it up. Include short sentences followed by longer sentences to increase readability and flow within your piece.

Drop Cap

Drop cap looks like this. Do not overuse this feature or you will lose readers. TOJ only permits drop cap in the very first line and occasionally in one other place.

Captivate them with your words, not fancy aesthetics. Keep it clean and use drop caps very sparingly. A little goes a long way in this case.

Drop cap can be found here. It will only show up in the Medium toolbar when you are highlighting a word or letter at the beginning of a sentence.

Quoting

This means that this sentence is found elsewhere in the piece. (Pull quote)

This means you are quoting someone else’s words.(block quote)

Do not overuse the quoting feature. Do not incorrectly use it for stylistic purposes. That is not permitted at TOJ.

Bullet Points

Add a * before your bulleted list, start typing, and then press enter. The same applies to numbering.

Bullet points help break up the text and increase readability. Use them intentionally.

Length

Shoot for a 4–7 minute read! Shorter pieces are acceptable as long as they provide valuable insight/takeaway. Poetry is accepted and welcomed, and shortform is now accepted with no strict word count. Make sure every word counts.

Read more here about how short form performs better in TOJ than in The Shortform.

Tags

Always use all five tags. Keep it relevant. To show up in a specific section of The Orange Journal, use a relevant tag: relationships, mental health, food, spirituality, personal growth, it changed my life

All pieces must use ‘the orange journal’ as one of the tags. If not, one of the editors will remove the last tag and replace it with ‘the orange journal.’

Submitting Drafts

Remember that most publications on Medium exclusively accept unpublished drafts. When sending in your submission to TOJ, please keep in mind that unpublished drafts are the only stories that will be considered. This has to do with the Medium algorithm.

As of May 24th, published pieces sent in to TOJ will automatically be removed from queue with no courtesy note or explanation. Kindly respect our time and we will respect yours.

Embeds

Plop the link and press enter. Give it a moment to load. That’s it! You can embed Youtube videos or gifs from websites like Giphy.

If you are going to add story embeds within your draft, please do not exceed two. If you do, I will kindly ask you to remove them. Otherwise, this makes the pub feel very spammy.

More importantly, it is a Medium rule that you will not get curated if more than 20% of your piece contains embeds. By limiting two per piece, you won’t be risking not getting curated for that reason.

You can embed your referral link + two other stories total (regardless of the author).

Any additional embeds will be removed by the editor or the editor will ask you to remove them.

Helpful AI

Download Grammarly. It’s a free extension and will save everyone a lot of time. We all miss things here and there, even after proofreading. Grammarly will help get your writing to the next level. There is a premium option, but I do believe the free one is satisfactory.

SEO Title and SEO Description

If you want your article to rank high on search engines like Google, read more here to learn how and why it is important.

Proofread!

You should be proofreading your article a minimum of two times. It’s really important that you read your article out loud to yourself, word by word, line by line.

I know it sounds silly, but it works, time and time again. Trust me. Not only do I see this work with myself when producing articles for Medium. I also see it work effectively for my students up to age 13. Every English teacher you ever had told you to proofread for a reason!

Articles with excessive grammatical errors will not be accepted.

Promote Yourself

I wish someone told me all of these valuable nuggets when I first started on the platform, but I genuinely love paying it forward and helping other writers succeed.

Promoting yourself might feel hard, but it doesn’t have to. Read about the ins and outs of Many Stories — I highly recommend it and I personally use it to promote myself. A few extra reads here and there definitely add up.

I also recently started using Flipboard after some Medium writers mentioned it. I am always experimenting with new ways to promote myself and my readers.

How to Add Your Story to The Orange Journal for Submission

Please let me know if there is anything I haven’t covered that you have questions about and I will update the article accordingly.

Ready to send in a submission? Ask to be added as a writer by commenting below your Medium handle. Example: @susie-fpinon. This can be found by clicking on the circle at the top right where your picture is. By providing your @, I am able to add writers more quickly, allowing me more time to review submissions. 😊

Remember to follow The Orange Journal for consideration.

Thank you for supporting this publication! We are so happy to have you.

More resources for the new writer (regularly updated)

P.S. I reserve the right to remove a writer from TOJ at my discretion at any time without notice. Some reasons for this may be:

• submitting published articles repeatedly— DRAFTS ONLY
• submitting drafts with excessive formatting and grammar errors after I have referred you to the formatting guidelines more than once
• reverting edits I made on your piece after my round of edits/publishing (this is a huge no-no.)

Writers who are removed will not have the opportunity to be added back.

Please do not expect a response from me as to why you were removed.

Thanks!🍊

Final note: Formatting guidelines are provided based on my personal experiences of what performs the best on Medium and what Medium is looking for, based on their guidelines. Feel free to reference these guidelines when submitting to any pub, not only TOJ. Each publication will vary with its requirements slightly, so be sure to read all formatting guidelines in full to increase your chance of acceptance, curation, and features!

Still have a question? For just $2 per month, ask me anything you want. Two questions per person per month. Sign up here.

Tap into positivity at Live Life Now, my new blog✨

Happy writing!

🆂🆄🆉🍊