TYPOGRAPHY

How to Get Read on Medium

That’s how many copies of Moby-Dick were sold during Herman Melville’s lifetime. A critical and commercial flop at the time of his death — by which point he was working as an anonymous customs inspector for the City of New York — it took nearly 50 years for Melville’s book to become the Great American Novel.

The lesson: Exceptional ideas always find an audience.

We don’t want you to wait that long. Medium is committed to helping writers publish great ideas, and not just popular ones. But we also want you to find an audience, so we’re offering these four tips to make sure your post looks its best, grabs people’s attention, holds it, and encourages them to pass it on.

Use an image that makes them stop scrolling

Make it relevant. If the free market dictated, every news story, book jacket, and white paper on fluid dynamics would feature a picture of a kitten, but that’s not always the best call. A relevant cover image — muddy wildcatters on a story about oil prices, and stag beetles on one about entomology — will engage directly with the people who are interested in your topic.

Pick something high res, but not TOO high res. Approximately 1900 pixels on the long end and a file size of at least 500 KB is ideal. But if you don’t have the time to right click and check the properties, just make sure that your image is clear and bright, and that it fits the screen reasonably well.

Make sure that the thumbnail works. Most Medium posts are shared on Twitter and Facebook using “cards,” short summaries that have a title, teaser, and a thumbnail version of your header image. Try to pick an image that will reproduce well at this smaller size.

Write a title that gets them in the door

Provide context about the story, but don’t give away the punch line. Your title should appeal to readers’ interests, and make them curious to find out more. You want them to know that your post involves cheese, but intrigued enough to click through and read about how Camembert saves lives.

Use “how” or “why.” This can veer dangerously close to the black magic of the internet — tricks that help bad content go viral — but, used in moderation, it can also be helpful. Readers want to learn something new, and a title that includes one of these words lets them know you’re about to make them smarter.

Focus group it. Make a list of titles and sit with them before you choose. And even better, run those titles by the people who sit in the cubicles around you, or the shipmates on your fishing vessel. Give yourself some options and open the floor to feedback, and the right title will rise to the top.

Show some effort to make it shine

Do the work. Our data lab recently unearthed a statistic that makes us very, very happy. It turns out that there’s a direct correlation between the time spent writing a post, and how popular it becomes. In other words, hard work matters. So spend a few extra minutes fixing the weak spots, and crafting the perfect conclusion.

Make it pretty. We designed Medium to make your work look amazing, but our tools only work if you use them. Just cutting and pasting your text into the editor and pushing “publish,” means that you’re missing the chance to select a call-out, or to add some fancy formatting that will make your post look like you have an entire team working in your attic.

Make it easy. If your paragraphs are too long they’ll look like an endless slog, too short, and you’ve written a grocery list. It’ll be different for every kind of post, but a solid rhythm is essential. And don’t forget to add some visual interest; an image or a video gives the eye a spot to rest before it sets off again on its long journey across the page.

Preformatted Text

Typographically, preformatted text is not the same thing as code. Sometimes, a faithful execution of the text requires preformatted text that may not have anything to do with code. Most browsers use Courier and that’s a good default with one slight adjustment, Courier 10 Pitch over regular Courier for Linux users. For example:

What did he want?’, asked Cornelius.
‘To Have the full implications explained to him, and also his
immediate obligations.’
’ Good’ said Cornelius.
‘I doubt it’, said Frank.

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