Write for Our Blog

Rules and guidelines for submitting to the Wikitongues publication.

Photo by Anete Lūsiņa on Unsplash

1. Review Medium’s rules

Submissions must comply with Medium’s Rules, Ad-Free Policy, Content Guidelines, and Curation Guidelines. Stories violating Medium’s rules will not be accepted.

2. Have a peek at our guidelines:

What to avoid

• Already-published stories: we accept unpublished drafts only.
• Stock photography: add some color to your story by picking a beautiful, free picture from websites like Unsplash, included in the Medium editing platform.
• Offensive or aggressive terminology: see more below.

What we prioritize

• Stories with Distribution Settings On: This is free for everyone to opt-in and ensures that your post can be recommended by the Medium team.
• Stories Behind Medium’s paywall: As part of our efforts to help as many writers and volunteers as possible, we’ll prioritize publishing stories behind the paywall over free stories. This doesn’t mean that you cannot submit a story if you are not part of the partner program, only that partner program stories will be published first in the queue.
• Longer articles: we prefer in-depth views, with an average read time of 8–12 minutes.

Topics of Interest

• Language preservation, language rights, cultural, and environmental activism
• Learning languages
• Culture
• Personal experiences related to the above
• Interviews related to the above
• Linguistics
• Histories of cultures and communities whose stories are not often told
• Celebrations of diversity and identity
• Initiatives and projects related to the above topics
• Topics about Wikitongues members and what they’re doing

Blog posts can be descriptive, expository, or narrative. If you have an idea for a topic you aren’t sure about, by all means, ask us!

Languages We Can Currently Publish

• English
• French
• Catalan
• Swahili
• Spanish
• Portuguese
• Russian
• German
• Finnish

As of now, these are the languages that we are able to edit. In the future we plan to have many more. If you are interested in being an editor for a language besides English, send us an email at hello@wikitongues.org.

Style Expectations

While everyone brings their own unique voice to blog writing, there is some level of awareness we ask of each of our contributors. As blog writers, we bring a welcome diversity of styles, opinions, and ideas to the table — just as everyone does not speak the same way, not everyone will write in the same manner either. That said, as writers of Wikitongues, we are also ambassadors to communities and cultures across the world — therefore we need to be careful in the way that we discuss certain topics.

In general we want to avoid terms and phrases that belittle, condescend, play down, or dismiss the relevance, autonomy, or ability of certain communities to think and act for themselves. Additionally, we want to always speak of other cultures and communities in as positive and identity-affirming a way as possible. If you have any questions or concerns about what this means to us, feel free to reach out at any time! Awareness of how our words affect others is not always easy, and is an ongoing process, so we can all help keep each other accountable.

With this in mind, please consider the following choices of wording:

Avoid the following terms when describing cultures:

• Primitive, uncivilized, third world country, underdeveloped
• “Indian” to describe Native Americans
• Any pejorative or racially charged terms
• Avoid controversial words where possible, except when discussing the nuances of how they are felt by others

When talking about our role as outsiders assisting communities in activist roles, avoid the following words:

• “Empower” — even though it sounds positive, this word can sometimes come across as dismissive of a community’s ability to act for itself
• “Save a language or community” — we want to provide the tools for sustainability, so that the language community, if they choose to do so, can safeguard their language

Avoiding Politics

• Inevitably, politics and language rights intersect in so many ways and they provoke opinions about political decisions in local governments. Discussing these is certainly admissible; however, try to keep the focus on the communities themselves
• Try to avoid your own personal political opinions, and emphasize only the efforts and perspectives of the communities we are highlighting in the face of any political legislation or rhetoric they may be fighting for or against.

2. What to Expect from Wikitongues

Support and encouragement! As editors of the blog, we want to work with you to hone in your writing skills and create work that not only you can share in professional and social platforms, but you can use to help bring attention to this worldwide mission! Your post will be published on our Medium account and further shared across our social media channels.

3. If you would like to submit a story, please fill out the form below (hover over the image and scroll down, you can fill out the form directly from this page):

Direct link: Write for our publication

We’re doing our best to respond to everyone, but Wikitongues is a small team with two staff members. Here’s our deal for you, so we don’t waste your time: if we don’t get back to you within 72 hours, please consider your story not accepted this time. But don’t let that stop you from contributing again, we love to share your voices!

If you’d like to donate to support the work of Wikitongues or if you’d like to get to know our work, please visit wikitongues.org. To watch our oral histories, subscribe to our YouTube channel or visit wikitongues.org to submit a video.