Koinonia’s Style Guidelines

How we want your story to look — Updated January 2024

These style guidelines ensure consistency of appearance, so Koinonia looks like a high-quality publication. If you’re importing a story from another site, please check that your imported post meets these requirements before submitting. When you have questions about wording, quotations, capitalization, punctuation, consult the AP Style Guide (overview here).

If you haven’t yet applied to be a writer for Koinonia, find our application at the bottom of this other page. That page also outlines what kind of content we do and do not accept.

If you’re looking for the Morning Devotions Guidelines, click here.

You are your post’s first editor.

Complete all grammar and spelling edits before submitting, and verify your post adheres to our “style” requirements below. Our editors may leave you notes about things to work on, and you’ll get emails about those (turn on Notifications under Settings). DO NOT DELETE editor’s notes before your submission is published in our publication.

When one or more editors leave notes on your work, you must address their requests in a timely manner. We’ll reject any post that lingers past two days unedited by a writer, allowing resubmission when corrected.

GENERAL OVERVIEW

1. Complies with Medium rules, policies, and guidelines
2. Unpublished DRAFT, English only.
3. AP stylebook should be consulted when in doubt.
4. Word maximum 1500, no word minimum (click Ctrl+A on draft to get entire post word count).
5. We accept most forms of writing (fiction, non-fiction, poetry, etc.). Not all posts have to be about the Bible or Faith — look under our headings for Writing Tips, Health, and Relationships to see what others submit.
6. The overall tone is family-friendly, uplifting, supportive, edifying, educating/informative, entertaining, empowering. No politics. Theology aligns with the Bible and The Apostles’ or Nicene Creed.
7. Well-organized.
8. Song lyrics may not be quoted unless they are in the public domain, or published before 1924.
9. Large passages from books, poems, articles may not be quoted. “Large” is subjective, but consider large as “longer than five lines on the screen.”
10. We will not publish AI-generated written content. We’ll review AI-created photos on a case basis.

TOP OF POST

1. Kicker is not required, but accepted (Required for our prompts and morning devotions.)
2. Title, subtitle, and headings formatted properly. Visit www.capitalizemytitle.com (AP Style preferred). Question marks as needed, but NEVER a period at the end.
3. SUBTITLES should be sentence case, not title case; no period.
4. Use only single quote marks in title/subtitle, when relevant.
5. Titles should be inviting/relevant and contain five or more words. This is important real estate to attract your reader, so think about it!
6. Feature image (must appear directly under title and subtitle) and all subsequent images must be captioned with credit to photographer (even if it’s yours.). It’s a Medium requirement.
7. All other graphics in a post should accentuate the points being made, not fill space and make the post longer for length’s sake.

REST OF POST

1. Spelling, grammar, and punctuation. We STRONGLY recommend installing a browser extension, such as Grammarly, ProWritingAid, or Hemingway. It WILL make you a better writer.
2. Short paragraphs: 3–4 sentences long are best for online reading.
3. NEVER open your post with more than 5–6 lines of Scripture text. GET the reader’s attention with your position or purpose early.
4. Do NOT include extra line spacing, three-dots, or graphics for space sake. Every formatting decision should be to benefit the reader, NOT you.
5. Block-quote REQUIRED for set apart actual quotes — Bible + books + people = proper attribution; Bible verse quotes must contain version, i.e., NIV, KJV. Bible quotes are allowed within a paragraph text, but still require a parenthetical reference that looks like this: (Luke 1:1, NIV) for example.
6. Quotes should be as brief as possible, including scripture, to make your point. Do not abuse fair use.
7. Please spell out Bible books names for the reader’s benefit.
8. Here’s an example of our required blockquote format (applies to other book and people quotes too):

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable — if anything is excellent or praiseworthy — think about such things. (Philippians 4:8, NIV)

4. Unquoted Bible references should be noted parenthetically like this (Matthew 1:1). No version required, if not a quote. This helps the new Christian or the nonbeliever who is reading (as well as our editors).

5. Must disclose affiliate links (Medium requirement).

6. May end with 1 or 2 promotional posts, no more. (Medium’s page design already has lots of stuff at the end.)

YOUR FINAL, PRE-SUBMISSION REVIEW

1. Topics — must include one of ours so your post goes in correct section: Christianity, Health, Relationships, Koinonia Writing Prompt; Five (5) topics preferred — it’s for your own good to market your piece to the Medium network. We will only correct, not add topics for you.
2. Our prompts will require a topic of Morning or Koinonia Writing Prompt (depends on submission, see each submission notes).
3. Review your submission details and correct them on this preview page:

As always, if you have questions, please email us at [email protected]

If you still haven’t applied to write for Koinonia, find our application at the bottom of this page.