# Medium Post Formatting Guide - Cody Towstik - Medium **Published by:** [nj](https://paragraph.com/@nj-2/) **Published on:** 2023-06-22 **URL:** https://paragraph.com/@nj-2/medium-post-formatting-guide-cody-towstik-medium ## Content A detailed exploration of all the features you need to know and understand when writing a post on Medium. Cody Towstik Excited to start writing on Medium and aren’t sure of the details? Maybe you’ve already created a story or two and want to take your game to the next level. This guide is for YOU. This guide will cover the features available to you when writing a story on Medium. Each feature covered in this post has an explanation of how to use it, a live example of it in action, and offer some tips n’ tricks as we go. For more detail, see the official Medium Help Center, you might want to check out the writing section. Relevant links to specific parts of the documentation will be provided as we go. Table of Contents (Links to other parts of the same story only work on desktop!) Setting a Title Inline TooltipMenuAdd an ImageAdd an Image From UnsplashAdd VideoAdd an Embed (with embedding Code and Polls examples)Add a Part Formatting MenuBold & ItalicsHyperlinksHeadersSubheadersQuotesPrivate Note Additional ElementsListsCodeDropcapsDashes ( — )EmojisSuperscriptMentions‘Edit Later’ Reminders ExtrasSpacingKeyboard ShortcutsFootnotesMathWord CountShared Draft Setting a Title https://help.medium.com/hc/en-us/articles/214895188-Custom-titles-subtitles The first Heading (big T) in your story is set as the Title. The first subheading (little T) becomes the Subtitle. If you accidentally delete your title, just make a new one at the top and make that line a Heading using the formatting menu. You can change the title that is displayed in previews on Medium and on social media posts in the triple-dot more options menu above, selecting Change display title/subtitle. The title (and subtitle) you see at the top can be different than what you set in the aforementioned settings menu. Inline Tooltip Menu The tooltip menu only appears if your cursor is focused on an empty line. We’ll call these ‘blocks’. Add An Image https://help.medium.com/hc/en-us/articles/215679797-Images It should be an image that you have the rights to use. Free-use resources like Pexels, Pixabay, Unsplash, and the Gender Spectrum Collection are great for sourcing Creative Commons-licensed images. Medium Docs You can click the tooltip menu camera icon, or drag n’ drop multiple pictures directly. The editor supports images up to 25MB in JPG, JPEG, GIF, and PNG formats. To remove an image, just click on it and press Delete or Backspace on your keyboard. While images in Medium posts will appear differently whether viewed on web, mobile web, iOS and Android apps, below are some guidelines for image dimensions in posts. If you use too small an image, neither Medium nor other social networks will be able to pull a featured image for a preview. Medium Docs Here the recommended sizes for images being used in the following ways: Left-aligned images: 700px Full column-width images: 1400px wide Out-set images: 2040px wide Screen-width images: 2500px wide Your image needs to be at least ***1060 px ***wide for all four placement options to show up. Don’t forget: your story will be displayed in many different formats. On mobile, all pictures are pretty much the same size. That means left-aligned images won’t wrap text. Images will be try to be resized to keep their original scale, but I would edit them beforehand to resize and crop images before using them in Medium. Also, be careful using huge white images because mobile users have access to a Dark Mode app, you don’t want to blind them. Here is an example of each image type, if you’re on mobile these will probably all look the same to you (see the captions!) Left-Aligned Image Left-aligned images can have text wrapped on the side of them. Be careful though, if there is text below a left-aligned imaged, all of the vertical white space next to the image will be collapsed, which may move your text unexpectedly upwards. Left-aligned Image Column-width images are sized to take up the entire width of the column that the text can be on. Notice how the text wraps right where the border of the images are. If the original image is too small, it will not be sized up to fit the entire column. Except on mobile, where smaller images may expand to fit the size of the screen. Column-width Image Column-width: a small image in it’s original upload size. **Outset-width **images scale up to just a bit beyond the column width. Out-set Image Screen-width images are the only image type that will get bigger as the window is resized, to take up the whole screen. As the screen gets smaller, all images will scale accordingly. Screen-width Pictures can have captions, which can contain links. It is a useful way to link back to the source of the image. A sample caption with a link to the source, which takes up a single line and automatically wraps if the text is too long. (Source: u/salt_watercolors) Make an image a link by clicking on it, and then pressing Ctrl/Cmd + K If you upload multiple images at a time (via drag n’ drop or file explorer), it will automatically create a grid. Images are placed initially in alphabetical order of their files names. If you upload too many photos to fit on one line, Medium will tile it in a multi-line grid. Images are resized to keep their original proportions at best-effort. You can drag n’ drop tile items to arrange them how you want. Medium is a little finicky with how they scale if the images on a row can’t fill the entire width of the page margin. Once published, readers can click one each image independently to view a larger version. Add an Image From Unsplash This image is the focal. Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash Unsplash images can be resized like regular images and are automatically captioned. You can only add one at a time, but you can drag them into a grid. Only text can appear next to images. Not another block type such as video or an embed. Use shift + F to make an image your featured image (for social media and thumbnails), and option/alt + click to set the focal point. That way cropped versions if your feature image are cropped properly. For example, the image of the fox drawing from Unsplash is the featured image of this article, with the center as the focal point. Clicking on the image after setting a focal point, you will see a green circle that represents the current focal point. You can also add alt text to your image that serves as brief description of this image for readers with visual impairments Medium Docs Add Video Paste a YouTube, Vimeo, or Vine (lol) link, and press enter. Not seen here: videos can be resized like images. Even full-screen width. This is YouTube . It’s funny that ‘Vine’ is still an option now that it doesn’t exist. This is a Vimeo. Add an Embed https://help.medium.com/hc/en-us/articles/214981378-Embeds Medium uses a third party service called Embed.ly to embed content. Embedly supports over 700 service providers, and has a documented process for getting your own content embeddable through their service. Embedding with the embed code is not supported. To embed content on Medium, all you need is the URL. For example, to embed a Tweet, paste the direct URL of the Tweet and press Enter. Medium Docs See the Medium documentation for a list of popular embeds. Note that since you are just copying the link rather than using a standard embed