WRITING
Rome Magazine Style Guide
For people who dislike rules, we must insist on a few
I’ve never been good at following rules. Not all of them, mind you. Some rules I think are essential. I believe in courtesy and manners, especially regarding how our actions affect others. Be polite. Be patient. Be kind. Be aware of others. It’s not all about you, or me.
The rules I don’t like feel capricious or part of someone’s weird power play to impose their will on others. I’ve bailed on more than one magazine or publication after reading their guidelines. I think to myself, “Jesus, get over yourself. You’re not The Atlantic.”
So if you feel the urge to tell me to piss off, I fully understand, but I’ve decided that if I’m going to try to create a quality publication worthy of readers’ (and writers’) time, I need to maintain some semblance of standards. I realize this is not a paid publication — we are not The Atlantic either — so I’ll do my best to keep them light. But these are deal breakers for me, so you should take a few minutes and read through them.
I’ll admit, we get into it. This is years of frustration in how poorly I think most publications are produced. The good news is that almost none of our requirements have anything to do with what you write about or how you go about doing it. These are all designed to help produce a high-quality publication that everyone can be proud of.
If you’ve read this far, you just might have what it takes.
— David Todd McCarty, Publisher
Pretend It’s A Magazine
To paraphrase a line from Fran Lebowitz in the Martin Scorsese-directed documentary “Pretend It’s A City,” we would like to request that contributing writers pretend this is a magazine. It’s not your blog or a social media post. It’s not a recipe or a book report. It’s an important story, and we want you to treat it as such. Imagine you’re going to be submitting to a legacy publication and proceed accordingly. In a nutshell, try not to suck.
This isn’t a legacy publication, and the only way you’re getting paid is if you’ve built up a following on Medium. That’s all you. But we’d still like it to not suck. So we’re going to be sticklers about certain rules so you can feel free to break all the others. We expect you to rock the boat. We expect you to poke the bear.
Let’s just try to do it professionally.
Structure
We follow a pretty standard format for Medium. If you’re unfamiliar with Medium’s formatting tools, you can read an extensive tutorial here. Rome uses all three parts of the header (Kicker, Title, Subtitle), plus a featured image, in that order. No exceptions.
Kicker. This seems to give people the most problems. You add a line above the title and use the small T tool (same one you use for subheads). Your kicker should offer the reader some understanding of the topic or category the article should be filed under. This is not a place to editorialize. That’s what the subtitle is for.
E.g., Politics. Supreme Court. Democracy. Election. Senate. Congress.
Title. Your title is the only thing most people will see when scrolling through their feed. They might not see your image or read your catchy sub. So make your title a good one. Not too long. Not too short. No clickbait. As much as we hate to admit it, titles that explain plainly what the article is about, perform much better than those with a more creative flair. Maybe if we get big enough, that will change.
Subtitle. This is the place to give the reader an additional bit of information on the scope and focus of your article. A place to editorialize why you think this is important or to explain further what you’re trying to say.
Featured Image. We discuss photography more below, but your featured image should be a high-quality image placed directly after the header (Kicker, Title, Sub).
Body. Medium has given us a fair number of formatting tools, but we suggest you use them sparingly. We’ve all seen articles where it looks like the author was trying to show off every tool available. They look like a cross between an internet recipe and an either-grader’s book report. They’re unreadable. The purpose of the tools is to make your article easier to read, not harder. Don’t get enamored with over-formatting your story.
Subheads should be used to break up sections, and page breaks (three little dots) should be used to break up long sections.
Callouts are great when used judiciously (one or two), but they shouldn’t replace the actual text of the article. If it’s part of your article, it should be in the article.
Unless you have a good reason, we don’t like to see bullets or numbered lists. This isn’t Buzzfeed.
Photography
We can’t tell you how seriously we take aesthetics regarding messaging. Many writers don’t seem to share our visual requirements, but we firmly believe when articles are well presented, they are more readily consumed. This is decades of branding experience talking.
Black and White (NEW). We have decided to go fully black and white from now on, for several reasons. One, it helps to provide some cohesion between disparate imagery. Two, it’s an homage to the newspaper days of old. We want Rome to look and feel different.
Cover Image. This is basically the only image we care about. If your article is more pictures than words, then this isn’t the right place for your piece. We’re all here to read what you have to say, not look at pictures. The cover image appears on the publication’s home page and affects how the entire operation is judged, so we can’t have one shitty image ruin the bunch.
Quality. This might sound subjective, and part of it is, but your image should be of the highest quality. If you’re not a photographer, it probably shouldn’t be one of your own. With rare exceptions, it should never include large type and shouldn’t be overly busy. Choose simple, dynamic, evocative images that help illustrate the story you’re trying to tell. Think conceptually, not literally.
Images must be at least 1280x720 and preferably 1920x1080 or larger. We prefer a 16:9 or even 2:1 aspect ratio, but will settle for landscape (horizontal). Portrait (vertical) or square are unusable as feature images and will not be accepted. This all has more to do with how it looks on the front page of the magazine as opposed to how it looks in your individual story. Your article is a reflection on the entire publication, so make them good.
Copyright. We don’t really care what you think you know about Fair Use, but it doesn’t exist in this context. This is a commercial enterprise and is only loosely defined as editorial. Legacy publications have licensing deals with groups such as AP and Reuters. They don’t just grab images off the web. The rule of thumb is this: If you don’t own it, someone else does, and you can’t use it without permission. Any photography you use to illustrate your story must be royalty-free or licensed to you and sourced with the proper credit. No exceptions. Medium has built-in access to Unsplash. Start there.
Style
We don’t get too pointy about things like AP Style, but we’re still pretty traditional when it comes to journalistic prose. It’s best to keep paragraphs relatively short, but not too short. There seems to be a fine line between the never-ending paragraph and the writer who appears to be writing in iambic pentameter. Too long, and it feels tedious. Too short, and it feels jumpy. Strive for a bit of flow.
Be professional. Don’t introduce yourself. Don’t acknowledge that you’re writing this for Medium or Rome. Present your ideas concisely and clearly.
We don’t subscribe to the notion that we all need to dumb our writing down for sixth graders to read. We don’t think sixth graders will be that big of a problem for us. We assume our readers are well-educated, high-information voters who are passionate about politics. That doesn’t mean it should read like stereo instructions, but this isn’t School House Rock, either. Make it interesting. Challenge people.
Bookends
The two most important parts of your article are the beginning and the end. You could argue this is getting into personal style, but we would argue that we’re talking about the basics of a quality article. If your opening sentence doesn’t grab the reader, they’re gone. If the rest of your opening paragraph doesn’t follow, it won’t go much better. Your introduction should introduce the reader to the premise of your article. The rest of the article should be spent providing examples proving your case and further explaining your theory.
Finally, you need an ending. There’s nothing worse than reading a good article that ends like the author was suddenly taken hostage. Think as much about your ending as you do your opening. Your opening encouraged the reader to read it, but the ending will decide if they remember it.
Proofing
We all make inadvertent errors when writing, and it’s easy to miss our own mistakes. We suggest using Grammarly or some other proofreading software, to at least catch your obvious mistakes. We don’t want to be your proofreader. We barely want to be your editor. We want to be your publisher. We expect you to do the work of making your writing as error-free as possible.
Sourcing
If you’re quoting another author, article, or study, you must provide links to your sources. In Medium, you can do this by using the ^ symbol, sometimes called a carrot. Press shift+6 and then the number of the footnote, such as this.¹ Once the superscript appears, you can highlight it and provide the URL in the space provided. Find more info here.
Politics
This is a publication dedicated to politics. Not memoir, travel, or blueberry muffin recipes, although if that’s your bag, you should check out our sister publication Ellemeno. Here we are writing about government, political parties, elections, and the relative insanity of trying to govern people. Think of it as a publication dedicated to cat herding.
We are not a partisan publication exactly, but it’s fair to say we lean hard left. If you have a balanced, well-thought-out piece making a case for something that flies in the face of progressive politics, by all means, submit it. But it must be factual and not some cockamamie conspiracy theory.
We reserve the right not to publish any article for any reason, but we’d prefer to keep our own ideology out of it. If it’s well-written and equitable, no matter how critical, then it’s fair game.
As a general rule, we think you should write about what you know. Unless you have a really solid handle on the political landscape of a country you don’t live in, you should probably avoid it. If you’re going to be critical, you’d better be accurate.
Becoming A Contributing Writer
If you’d still like to be added as a contributing writer, send a link to an unpublished draft you’d like us to publish to submissions@romemagazine.us. If we think it’s a good fit, we’ll add you as a writer. We want to find the best writers and this isn’t for everyone.
