Sample Article

All of our articles follow a template that is consistent across our website. Many of the style features you see in a published article are managed programmatically in the website design, not in the article submission itself. This is helpful to understand when requesting design edits to your article proof — we will do our best to accommodate requests within reason, but in some cases we are unable to change site-wide design options.

Quick Reference

• Title length: 65 characters or less
• Featured image size: 670px × 350px (1.78:1 / 16:9 ratio)
• Article content width: 670px (images scale down to fit)
• Image file size: under 20MB, ideally 2–4MB
• Alt text length: 125 characters or less
• Accepted image formats: .webp, .png, .svg, .jpg, .jpeg, .gif

SEO Considerations

Title

Titles should be 65 characters or less. Search engines penalize longer titles, and they will not display completely in search result previews. Longer titles are also difficult to manage within our magazine design system.

Images

These tips will help you have a smooth publishing experience and understand our image choices on the Connection.

File Types

Send images in any of the following formats: .webp, .png, .svg, .jpg, .jpeg, .gif. Images embedded in Word documents are also acceptable, but if your article contains a large number of images, please consider sending those separately with contextual filenames.

File Size

Limit image file size to under 20MB, preferably in the 2–4MB range. Let us know if you need assistance with this.

File Names

Use file names that indicate what the image is for — include your company name or article title in the file name. This helps us maintain our media library, assists with SEO, and ensures your images are easily indexed, searchable, and identifiable.

Dimensions

For images placed within your article body, any dimension is acceptable. Our current design limits the content area to 670px wide, so images never need to be larger than this — anything wider will be scaled down to fit.

Text in Images

Try to avoid putting text in images, especially text that’s important to the subject matter. You do not need to include your article title or caption in image text — that’s already designed into the site and optimized for SEO and usability.

Images are resized responsively throughout the site. Your featured image at the top of the article also becomes the thumbnail on the front page, and any embedded text becomes unreadable at both ends of that scaling spectrum — whether viewed on a large monitor or a small phone screen.

Where text is appropriate (charts, etc.), keep it clear, as large as possible, and high-contrast in a simple font — and use that text in the file name as well.

Image Attributes: Title, Alt Text, Description, Caption

All images need alt text and a description, and optionally a caption. This matters for both SEO and accessibility. If you want to specify this text yourself, include it with your article submission — if you don’t, we will create it for you.

• Title — Search engines use the image title to add value to your article and rate its relevance to our website. It’s also used by accessibility tools and screen readers, and by our team to index and locate content among the hundreds of images we handle monthly. We’ll adjust titles before upload if needed.
• Alt Text — Describes the information or function the image represents, for screen readers, speech input software, and search engine indexing. Keep it to 125 characters or less.
  • If the image contains text not included in nearby body text, include that text here.
  • If the image is functional (a button or banner), describe its exact function.
  • If the image is purely decorative, alt text isn’t required for accessibility but is still needed for SEO — a brief description is fine (e.g., “MyCompany logo” or “Decorative featured image”).
• Description — A brief but thorough description of the image itself, as if describing it to someone who can’t see it.
• Caption — Displayed beneath the image, using the same style site-wide. We generally won’t change caption styling for an individual article. Captions are optional; descriptions are still required either way.

Featured Image

The image at the top of nearly every article is the “featured image.” Its size is fixed at 670px × 350px (a 1.78:1 ratio — 16:9 typically scales well). If your image doesn’t match this size or ratio, it will be programmatically cropped or scaled.

We ask all contributors to provide a featured image. If your article is featured on our cover, your cover image and featured image should be different. Please avoid text in the featured image where possible. Featured images can be conceptual, abstract, or whatever suits the piece — if you need help sourcing one, let us know; we have access to several image libraries.

Limitation: We are unable to direct the focus point of the crop/scale.

Thumbnails

The featured image is also used to generate thumbnails elsewhere on the site (front page, related articles, etc.). In some cases those thumbnails are intentionally zoomed or cropped as a design choice, and we cannot selectively disable this for individual images. You can minimize the effect by submitting a featured image already sized to a 1.78:1 (16:9) ratio.

Limitation: We cannot turn off zoom/crop effects for individual images — matching the target ratio up front is the best way to avoid it.

Article Images

Images placed within the article body can be any size or aspect ratio, but must fit within our 670px-wide content area — anything larger will scale down responsively. If readers need access to a larger version, let us know and we’ll link out to the full-size file.

Limitation: Must fit within the 670px content area.

Article Graphs

Graphs are saved from Word as an image for accurate display. We cannot alter your underlying graph data — if a graph needs correction, please recreate it and send the corrected version before the publish date.

Galleries / Slideshows

If you’d like an image gallery or slideshow, try to keep all images the same dimensions and orientation. If that’s not possible, there may be some display limitations, but we’ll work with you to find the best solution.

Limitation: Mixed orientations (landscape/portrait) or drastically different sizes can cause “jumping” at transitions or pixelation on images much smaller than others in the set.

Headings

Use headings semantically, like an outline — broader topics get larger headings (H2, H3), with more specific subheadings below them (H4, H5, H6). Screen readers and search engines use this structure to interpret the flow of information on the page.

No article should include an H1 — that’s reserved for the article title itself, and search engines and screen readers penalize multiple H1s on one page. If you’d like a different heading color than our site default, note that in your Word document.

Heading Samples

H2 — this is an H2 heading

H3 — this is an H3 heading

H4 — this is an H4 heading

H5 — this is an H5 heading

H6 — this is an H6 heading

Lists

The bullets below are the standard styles for our publication and are applied automatically — you don’t need to do anything to achieve them. This is how bulleted and numbered lists will render on the Connection regardless of the bullet style used in your source document.

Bulleted List (sample)

• First level bullet
  • Second level bullet (one indentation)
    • Third level bullet (two indentations)

Numbered List (sample)

To use any of the numbered list styles below, specify this in your document if you’re unable to format them yourself.

1. Level one — numbered
   1. Level two — lower-alpha
      1. Level three — lower-roman
      2. Level three — second example

Paragraph Alignment

Center Aligned

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Sed dui enim, malesuada et feugiat quis, suscipit eget tortor. Integer vel convallis velit. Nullam hendrerit, quam rutrum convallis ultricies, elit dui cursus risus, et sollicitudin ante velit eget urna.

Left Aligned

Pellentesque vehicula gravida venenatis. Pellentesque vitae dolor sed orci vehicula convallis sed non nisl. Integer malesuada, urna in tincidunt commodo, nibh sem tincidunt risus, vel suscipit nulla magna et urna.

Right Aligned

Pellentesque fermentum, neque in mollis blandit, nulla nunc iaculis elit, vel laoreet nibh sapien ullamcorper orci. Sed nec porttitor ligula, et porta nisi. Vivamus iaculis tellus eget velit malesuada mollis.

Justified

Etiam ornare sem ornare enim malesuada, sit amet dapibus est sollicitudin. Pellentesque aliquet nibh ac eros viverra tempor. Nulla tempus dui a felis gravida iaculis. Curabitur ex quam, facilisis elementum vehicula eleifend, laoreet ac magna.

Blockquote

Integer eget tortor orci. Aenean suscipit, massa in gravida congue, orci lacus tristique massa, vel placerat orci lorem sed turpis. Mauris convallis risus non ipsum mollis consequat. Nulla quis lorem auctor quam interdum rhoncus.

Thank you for taking the time and effort to contribute content to the Connection. If you have any questions or concerns about your article in the publishing process, please reach out and we will be happy to assist.