THE THINKERY GUIDELINES
Formatting Guidelines for The Thinkery
How to format your article for publication in The Thinkery
Last updated: 9 Apr, 2024
If you want to be added as a writer, or want to know what kind of articles are accepted by The Thinkery, check out these guidelines:
Table of Contents:
- Header
— Kicker
— Title
— Subtitle
— The Thinkery Header - Images
— First/Feature Image
— Image Caption
— Image Alt Text - Body Text
— Sections
— Section Breaks
— Article End - Footer
— Writer’s Byline
— Addendum
Formatting for The Thinkery
Here are the formatting rules for getting something published in The Thinkery. This is to keep all the articles looking like they belong.
This article is formatted according to these very guidelines, so you can also save it and use it as a reference.
Anyway, here’s how to format your article:
Header
Kicker
Format: All caps, e.g. COGNITIVE BIASES
Either the main topic of the article or the name of your own series of articles.
Title
Format: Title Case, which you can do with: https://capitalizemytitle.com/, unless you have some artistic/editorial justification for doing otherwise.
The title should make it reasonably clear what they article is about.
“Literary” titles are okay if they’re not too obscure. Don’t have a title like “The Daily Diary of Dionysius” and then write an article about hedonic adaptation or something, it’s just a bit too obscure. If you have 100k followers, you can label your articles what you want — the thing with great views — but if you’re a new writer, people need to find your article and it needs to have a title that hints at what they’re going to read.
On the other end of that spectrum, don’t give your article a title that sounds like a research paper — try and be clever and succinct.
No click-bait: if you promise something in the title, it better be in the article.
Subtitle
Format: Sentence case. No full-stop at the end
The subtitle should elaborate on the main title, giving more information about the article. Generally this means an indication of a question about or response to the idea in the title, or a hint at how the writer has approached the idea.
If the title is “literary” the subtitle should make up for this by being more straightforward and detailed about the content of the article.
The Thinkery Header
The editor will add this header to the top of your article, above the feature image:
Images
First/Feature Image
All articles must have at least one image.
The first image should be at the top, just under The Thinkery header graphic.
It usually makes sense that the first image is also the feature image, but you can use a different image for the feature image if you have other images in the article.
Image Caption
All images need a caption (apart from the graphics for line breaks, The Thinkery header and the writer’s byline).
This caption can say whatever you want it to say — it doesn’t need to be descriptive — but it must credit the creator or generator of the image.
AI-generated images are fine if they fit the topic, but who generated it and what platform or tool they used to generate it must be credited in the caption.
Image Alt Text
All images need Alt text, and it must be as descriptive as possible.
The point of Alt text is to help the visually-impaired understand what the picture is, so be thoughtful.
(The graphics for line breaks, The Thinkery header and the writer’s byline already have alt texts).
Body Text
You can format this as you see fit, but don’t make it look like a website trying to sell some over-priced grand solution to all your problems.
Sections
Main sections should be formatted as a H1 title — highlight the title and press the big T in the formatting panel that pops up.
Subsections should be formatted as a H2 title — press the little T.
Section Breaks
The editor will add a black line between the main sections, the same ones used throughout this article:
Please indicate where you would like the line breaks to be with:
[SECTION BREAK]
Intra-section breaks (breaks within a main section, where a new subsection title is used) should be indicated with one of Medium’s Add a new part three dots:
(Hit Cmd+Enter or start a new line and press the + sign that shows up on the left, then press the ··· button on the right end of the panel that pops up)
Article End
Indicate the very end of the article (before the writer’s byline) also with one of these Add a new part three dots.
Footer
Writer’s Byline
When you’re added as a writer, a byline graphic with your name or Medium pseudonym will be created for you, to be added to the end of the article, followed by a short writer’s promotion or CTA section — if you want one, like this, written all in italics:
Addendum
Citations, references or additional credits should go at the very bottom of the article, after the writer’s byline. Format these however you like, so long as they’re in a consistent style.
Good Thinking
Thanks for considering The Thinkery for your article submission.
If you have any questions about formatting, feel free to ask them in the comments of this post, so that other people can get the same answer.
Or if you want to ask them privately you can email info.thethinkery@gmail.com.
I look forward to reading your articles.
The editor,
Kiall
I’ve decided to keep all my writing on medium free of paywalls. So if you like my writing and want to help me write more, you can buy me a coffee, subscribe, or hire me via Upwork or email: kiall.hildred@gmail.com
