Writing Tell your story. Be inspired. by Nick Fisher Medium Help Center Medium is designed to get out of the way and let you write. To that end, we don't have an extensive formatting menu and two hundred fonts to choose from. We do offer a few simple tools to make your posts look their best. table of contents Writing table of contents Formatting Lists Embedding Videos, Tweets, Vines, etc. Word Counter Medium Keyboard Shortcuts Notes Drafts Images Publishing Submitting Your Story To A Collection Extra Bits Formatting Highlight the text you would like to style and the formatting bar opens: You can bold, italicize, create headers, block quotes, pull quotes (click the quote button twice), and link elsewhere. Formatting can be removed by deselecting the option on the toolbar. Break up your post into sections by inserting horizontal rules -- just hit "enter" twice. Lists You can make bulleted or numbered lists. To start a list, type a dash or 1. and then start typing your first item. Once you hit "return" it will change to a list. Embedding Videos, Tweets, Vines, etc. Paste the URL of the content you'd like to embed in the place you'd like it to appear in your post and hit return. Read more about embedding here. Word Counter The Medium editor can count words. Highlight the text that you want counted and the word count will display in the upper left corner of the page. Medium Keyboard Shortcuts * Make text H1 -- cmd+1 * Make text H2 -- cmd+2 * Block quote -- cmd+5 * Code block -- cmd+6 * Remove all formatting -- cmd+0 * See all keyboard shortcuts -- cmd+? Stop adding items to a list by hitting "return" twice. By the way, those are real keyboard shortcuts. Use them to speed up your editing. Notes Notes are a great way to leave yourself reminders, add footnotes, or give feedback to others. To leave a note, highlight the text you would like to comment on. Click to begin typing, choose whether you would like the note to be public or private, click save, and you're done. You can also edit or delete your own notes and reply to other people's notes (try it out on this paragraph if you like). Notes can also be left from your phone or tablet. Read more about how notes work here. Drafts We auto-save aggressively so you never lose any content. If for some reason you lose your place while writing, your piece will be waiting for you in your drafts when you come back. Send the draft's URL to your friends to get feedback. To share your unpublished draft use the "Share Draft" button, which will generate a secret link you can send to friends. The best part? Once you publish your post, we will send them an invite to write on Medium and thank them in the sidebar. Images Looking for a beautiful image? This post links to some services that provide high quality stock photos that are free to use. For optimal image sizing in a Medium story, read this post. Publishing Once every i is dotted and t is crossed, just find that big green "Publish" button and fire away. You will immediately be taken to the published post. From here we encourage you to grab the link and share it with the world. Submitting Your Story To A Collection After you've published your story, submit it to one or more collections. On the collection search page, enter some keywords that are relevant to your collection, e.g., science, music, technology, etc., and find collection(s) that seem like a good fit for your story. Click through to the collection you want to submit your story to and click the "Submit/Remove" button in the upper right corner: You'll be notified by email if the collection editor makes a decision on your story. Remember that your published story is always publicly visible on your profile page. Extra Bits You can force a soft return, which inserts less padding between the line break, by hitting "shift-enter." * The editor will automatically close your "quotes" and em your dashes -- for you. If you have any questions, email us at yourfriends@medium.com.