3 features Medium needs… for Science Writing
Medium is a great platform for science writing. Although “Science” is not among the top 20 tags (60K uses against, for instance, 300K of “Politics”), my recent experience has taught me that Medium readers are eager to see well-written, informative, engaging posts on scientific trends and discoveries.
Some scientists have been producing posts that have instantly drawn the attention of thousands of readers, but have had to go through a few hoops in order to do that.
More often than not, scientific writing requires the use of detailed diagrams, references to peer-reviewed papers, the ability to display mathematic formulae, greek or chemical symbols. Unfortunately, in Medium you have to find workarounds that allow you to take advantage of these techniques. Some writers have slowly found awkward and more or less satisfying solutions, but most might be drawn to abandon the challenge altogether and return to friendlier platforms or their own blogs.
Here I outline 3 features that would make Medium a much more science-writer-friendly platform.
1. Footnote anchors
In my posts, whenever I state something that I judge might not be obvious to my readers, I add a numeric superscript like this¹. The small number indicates that a specific reference is available for the statement contained in the previous sentence.
Unfortunately, that’s nearly all you can do with Medium: insert a superscript. In fact, I could add a link to the number character, such as this². However, besides the fact that the underlining is aesthetically questionable, this only allows me to link to an external web page. There is no way to directly link the number character to a specific point at the end of the post, by adding an anchor. This has a huge disadvantage: there isn’t a place where the whole list of references for the entire post can be accessed.
A workaround that I have found reasonably effective is to create a google document with the full, numbered list of references and add a link to it at the end of the post, as shown below.
In addition to this, writers have a hard time inserting footnote superscripts, because if they edit the text and add a reference between two pre-existing ones, they have to shift every single footnote number up by hand.
Here is an example:
In this sentence¹, I have added² three references³.
If I wanted to modify the sentence by adding a reference at the beginning:
In this¹ sentence¹, I have added² three references³.
I have to shift all the remaining footnote numbers up by one, and this has to be done manually. My dodgy workaround for this problem is to use the same special character (such as *) in place of each footnote number, then replace all the *’s with ordered numbers only when I have finished editing the post.
Needless to say, Medium should introduce a footnote system with anchors and self numbering.
2. Resizing images
This feature is easy to explain, and almost anybody who has ever written on Medium will have thought of it. When you insert an image in a post, it will appear in its original size. There is no way to resize it by shrinking or stretching it. On the other hand, you are allowed to decide whether you would like to see it in-line or as a larger stand-alone figure. You can also add Alt-text to your images (the text you see as you hover it).
Unfortunately, the absence of resizing controls is very limiting. Sometimes you need to add several images, each with a different size, and this has the potential to make the post look much less visually homogeneous.
In order to avoid this problem, you need to make sure you add images that have the right size. Medium suggests three sets of dimensions that fit well in the post format (see figure above). However, this is hardly practical, because it requires you to open the image in an editor and resize it. I normally use Paint, just because it’s quick and always present on Microsoft systems, and click onto the “Resize” option (see figure below).
There is an easy fix for this issue: allow users to change the inserted image size while editing a post, without the need to use external software to resize the whole file.
3. Add formulae
Some writers have discussed the inability to add and edit LaTeX formulae on Medium. Effective workarounds have been found, but they rely either on using Unicode characters (which look awful in mathematical formulae), or on inserting images which depict the formulae one wishes to see in the post. The second method requires you to use LateX-it or some other external software that can produce image format files from a line of LateX code. I advice that you check out Tyler Neylon’s post on this workaround:
However, once again, this is cumbersome for the regular science or mathematics writer, as it implies using another piece of software and spending time to produce the desired output. This is always time subtracted from the craft of writing.
Summary
I do hope that Medium will update their post writing interface to allow the features I have described to become available. Medium’s visually minimalistic and elegant formatting is a strength which I greatly appreciate; at the same time, I believe that allowing writers the freedom they need in the way they format and enrich their content should be one of the main objectives of the platform.
