Aim for short paragraphs no longer than five lines.

Word count: 400-800 words. No more, no less.

Your title is the first thing people see. Do not underestimate its importance! Think hard on it, then think even harder. 

According to research ...

  • Readers prefer titles without superlatives: best, perfect, amazing, etc.

  • Eight-word titles get the most clicks.

  • Readers prefer titles that use the word "who" rather than "ways." ("The 5 Types of Doctors Who ..." vs. "5 Ways That Doctors Can ...")

Five types of titles, in order of most to least viewed:

  1. Numbered (5 Ways to Make Your Nasty Medication Taste Better)

  2. Audience-addressing (If Your Medication Tastes Nasty, I'm Here to Help)

  3. How-to (How to Make Your Medications Taste Better)

  4. Ordinary (I Wish Medications Wouldn't Taste Nasty)

  5. Questioning (Do Your Medications Taste Nasty?)

Include at least 5 hyperlinks, even for narratives. You are encouraged to add more than 5 but keep in mind that using too many can cause the column to get flagged as spam. The preference is that you link to content on this website — these are called internal links. If you need to use external links, that’s fine, but aim for internal links where possible.

  • Internal link: From this website: link to a past column you wrote, another columnist’s, a news article, or resource pages. 

  • External link: Credible news sites, blogs, government and nonprofit websites, other Bionews sites, freely accessible studies.

  1. Some credible sources: FDA, Drugs.com, CDC, patient nonprofits, institutions like Mayo and Cleveland clinics.

  2. Some sites never accepted: The Mighty, WebMD, Medical News Today, Healthline, Wikipedia, Livestrong, and Everyday Health.

Break up the text

Large blocks of text intimidate readers. Break up the text much as possible. Options:

  • short paragraphs (one topic per paragraph, 2-5 lines)

  • bullet points (less than 30% of the column)

  • subheadings (no more than five)

  • images (maybe every four paragraphs at most, horizontal best)

    Short sentences for short attention spans

    American Press Institute study: “When the average sentence length in a piece was fewer than eight words long, readers understood 100 percent of the story. Even at 14 words, they could comprehend more than 90 percent of the information. But move up to 43-word sentences, and comprehension dropped below 10 percent.“

    • Vary that shortness: short-short, medium-short, long-short, long-short, short-short, medium-short, etc. Sentence structure variety better engages the mind.

    • Columns require at least 5 hyperlinks, even for narratives. You are encouraged to add more than 5, but keep in mind that using too many can cause the column to get flagged as spam. The preference is that you link to content published by the site you write for — these are called internal links. If you need to use external links, that’s fine, but aim for internal links where possible.

      • Internal link: From the disease site you publish on: link to a past column you wrote, another columnist’s, a news article, or resource pages. 

      • External link: From a site that your column isn’t published on; credible news sites, blogs, government and nonprofit websites, other Bionews sites, freely accessible studies.


      Stating a scientific claim or lesser-known fact? Link to credible sources, like peer-reviewed studies. You can also find reports on studies written by Bionews or reputable news sources. Never try to interpret data yourself.

      1. Some credible sources: FDA, Drugs.com, CDC, patient nonprofits, institutions like Mayo and Cleveland clinics.

      2. If a quote or bit of info is from a video, tell editors what time the info/quote occurs. 

      3. If uncertain about a source's authenticity/reputation, message an editor.

      4. Some sites never accepted: The Mighty, WebMD, Medical News Today, Healthline, Wikipedia, Livestrong, and Everyday Health.

      5. Click here to learn to insert links.