Summary

The web content explains how to use "kickers," a third headline in all caps above the main title, to enhance Medium article titles.

Abstract

The article titled "Using Kickers to Put Some Kick Into Your Story Titles" provides insights into the use of a third title, known as a kicker, in Medium story titles. The author describes their initial curiosity and struggle to find information on how to add this upper title, which appears in all caps above the main title. After extensive research, the author discovered that this element is called a kicker and can be used to categorize stories or add intrigue. The article details the steps to create a kicker, emphasizing that it is formatted as a Small-T subtitle and automatically converted to all caps upon publishing. The author also shares additional uses for kickers, such as creating series groupings or adding hotlinks for navigation.

Opinions

The author initially believed that the ability to add a kicker might be a privilege for higher-ranked Medium writers or related to curation.
Upon learning about kickers, the author considered it a significant discovery, akin to a "eureka moment."
The author suggests that information about kickers is not readily available to new Medium users, indicating a gap in the platform's introductory guidance.
The article implies that veteran writers might already be familiar with the concept of kickers, which could be considered common knowledge among them.
The author encourages interaction and further discussion in the comments, showing openness to feedback and a community-oriented approach.

Medium Article Titles

Using Kickers to Put Some Kick Into Your Story Titles

An easy way to boot your titles into high gear

For some time, I have been noticing that some writers publish Medium stories with three titles.

Every so often, I come across a story with a standard Big-T main title and Small-T subtitle, along with a third title in all caps above the main title, as you can see in the three-line title of this story.

Wow, I thought every time I’d see it. That sure looks nice. How do they do that?

I wondered if it had something to do with the curation fairy.

Or maybe there was some unknown secret writer ranking that confers certain members with magical title-making privileges.

I had to find out.

But since I did not even know what these upper titles were called, the only thing I could do was fumble-search around the Googlesphere. I searched for: medium title above main title medium three titles medium titles medium how to add an upper title

No matter what word combination I tried, nothing returned the info I was looking for. I finally gave up, assuming that such knowledge was unavailable to a bottom-rung newbie like me.

Then the other day, while researching information about using Small-T Sub-titles, I stumbled across precisely the information I had been searching for.

Introducing the kicker

I finally found out that the all-caps third headline above the main headline is called a kicker. And now that I had a name, the rest was easy.

⬛ But first…!!

At this point, perhaps I should admit this information may be old hat for veteran power writers here on Medium.

For me, it was a real eureka moment.

Though there are articles on Medium that describe kickers and how to use them, detailed explanations about kickers are not included in the information that a newbie is initially exposed to after joining Medium (IMHO).

⬛ What is a kicker?

A kicker is a third headline, in all caps, above the main title of a story. Usually, kicker text is formatted as a Small-T subtitle, and it is converted automatically to all caps in your published story.

Many people use kickers to categorize a story. For example, let’s say you want to do a four or five story series about cats. You could include the kicker “CATS” in the title of all your stories to show they are part of a series, group, or collection.

You can also use a kicker to add teaser or hook text to your title.

⬛ To create a kicker

First, create your Big-T main title text as you normally would.
Click to the left of your Big-T main title text to locate the cursor there, and then press Enter.
In the new line that is created, type the text you want to use as your kicker.
Select your kicker text.
On the editor toolbar that appears, click the Small-T subtitle button.

This makes the selected text a kicker.
No matter how you capitalize your kicker text in the editor, it will be displayed in all caps when you publish your story.

6. Write the rest of your story as you normally would.

⬛ What else you can do with kickers

You can use the pipe character to line up multiple kickers.

You can hotlink from a kicker. For example, you might create a list of your cat stories and hotlink to it so people are taken to the list when they click your CATS kicker text.

⬛ And that is it.

If you think there is something I overlooked or got wrong about kicker text, please feel free to let me and the rest of us know in the comments.