Nice one, Medium.

Today I noticed another one of Medium’s wonderful typographic details. I have no idea how long it took to code, but I’m guessing it was non-trivial.

“In typography and graphic design, when you start a new paragraph with a quotation, it’s generally considered a best practice to align the first actual letter in the quote with first letter in all the other lines, and push the opening quotation mark out slightly to the left.”

Medium does this perfectly. For comparison’s sake. Here’s a paragraph-opening quote without that effect:

​“Here’s how opening quotes work on pretty much any other writing platform. Not quite as hot.”

It’s the tiny details like this that ultimately add up to a natural reading experience. Kudos to Medium for investing your limited design and engineering resources into features that 99% of your readers will never consciously notice, but make all the difference.

Reminds me of something a wise man once said:

When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood in the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.