Style Guidelines

Koinonia’s Style Guide for ‘Morning Devotions’

On writing short-form

In January 2022, Koinonia opened a new section on our publication called Morning Devotions.

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

The ultimate (future) goal is to have a devotion ready every morning (Monday — Sunday) for our readers. Let’s see how it goes in this initiative’s first months and perhaps by spring we will have a writer scheduled for each day. If there are enough interested writers, you might write on a two-week schedule, for instance.

Please pray about your participation.

Our editors will take the submissions we get in a week and schedule them. There’s no mechanism on Medium to show that your post has been officially scheduled, so you will have to trust the process. Our editors won’t have time to notify writers about the scheduling process each week. You’ve already noticed we publish your work faster than many other publications, right?

Why 150 words?

Short-form writing gained significant traction in the last year or so. Medium actually began curating this format for further distribution in 2021. Writing short-form takes practice, and it’s successful because of terrific editing — getting rid of every extraneous word, choosing one word to replace two, and so on.

I suggest you read this piece by Greg Prince about how short-form writing can increase your readership. And Michelle Legro offers details about the benefits you and your readers gain from short-form work. I’ll link to the Medium page about short-form as a courtesy, but it is woefully out of date.

We hope you’ll give it a whirl!

As always, our editing team will help you get it just right. But you always must do the first, most important editing work before submission.

Morning Devotions Requirements

We’re introducing a few requirements that differ from our main submission guidelines. Brief videos show how to use features you might not have tried on Medium. Videos are only one or two minutes long.

• Posts of 150 words or fewer. (Video on finding word count and editing for brevity.) Important note: Once you submit, Medium may not count all your words and your results could be lower than 150, but that count’s irrelevant to our process. Please follow our requirement for finding word count; this will increase your writing skill at whittling words. Find links to sample posts at bottom of this page.
• Kicker required above title. Kicker must be MORNING DEVOTIONS. (Video on creating a kicker.) Kicker font format and capitalization happens by default upon publication!
• Title — format using the big “T” option on the pop-up format menu.
• Subtitle is NOT required but recommended. (Here’s a video on a really cool way to include a subtitle without it adding to your word count.)
• Photo format required is second from left. (Video explanation.) This format takes up less real estate (i.e., space) than the larger ones. Your graphic should not be bigger than your post!
• Photo must have attribution text in its caption as required by Medium.
• Topics. Koinonia requires all submissions to have five topics. One required topic for this devotional content is Morning. The other is Christianity (for obvious reasons). (If you don’t use this topic, your post won’t end up on the Morning Devotions page.)
• Scripture citation and format follow our guidelines for long-form. First quote-mark format from formatting menu and please include version for any direct Bible quotes, e.g., (1 John 1:1, NIV).
• Review your submission on the Preview page before clicking the final submit button. (See graphic below or read more about this final check.)
• You may promote your other writing using text-based links (like the link in the bullet above). (Video)
• No biographical or promotional content at the end, as it would be counted in your 150-word limitation.
• No additional graphics in the short-form devotionals.
• No three-dot divider anywhere in the devotional.

Devotional Series submissions are welcome

Want to write a series and have us publish them consecutively? Yes, we will do that!

• Two- to three-post series accepted.
• Submit all on same day, around the same time. (Work ahead, then submit)
• Each post must stand on its own: opening, middle, closing.
• Recommendation: use each title to create a cohesive unit. Make them interesting, remembering how readers find your posts in many places on the platform.

Review your submission details and correct them on this preview page.

Our own Sara Dagen stepped out bravely and gave the 150-word limit a try. She found it fun and challenging! Here’s what she wrote. Here’s a powerful message by Bett Harris that delivers boldly and still includes to short scripture quotations.