Creating content

Editing drafts

Change anything before it goes out - headline, standfirst, body, search details, byline and picture - with an in-place rewrite and your original draft always kept.

Every article arrives as a draft you can change. Nothing about it is locked: the desks wrote it, and you decide what goes out under your name. Open any article from your library to edit it.

On this page

What you can edit

The article editor holds every part of the article:

Headline
Standfirst - the short line under the headline
Body - every section, paragraph and link
Search title and search description - what people see on a search results page
Web address - the slug the article publishes at
Picture description - the alt text read out by screen readers
Table of contents - on or off for this article

Your changes save as you type, and a small indicator says whether the article is saved, saving, or has unsaved changes.

Rewrite a passage in place

Select a sentence or a paragraph and ask for a rewrite in your own words: "make this shorter", "more formal", "explain this for a beginner". The new text replaces the selection where it stands. A rewrite is a paid action, so you see its cost and confirm it first.

The rewrite works on what you selected, not the whole article, so the rest of your edits stay exactly as they are.

Your original is always kept

The draft exactly as the desks delivered it is kept, however much you change. If an edit goes wrong, you can restore the original.

Choose the byline

Every article publishes under a named byline. In the editor, pick any author from the domain's masthead. If you leave it unpicked, the article publishes under the domain's editor of record - the one person accountable for that publication. Add and manage authors on the domain's Masthead page; see Voice and bylines.

Change the picture

Not happy with the cover? Press Draw another on the featured picture and the Art Desk draws a new one for the same article. Each new picture is a paid action, so the cost is shown before you confirm. The old picture is kept in storage, so a page that already uses it does not break. See Images.

Read it as your reader will

Switch to the reading view for a clean, distraction-free page, with a choice of three background tones. It is the quickest way to judge whether the article reads well before you publish.

Take it out as text

Export a single article as Markdown, HTML or plain text, or open a print-ready view. Use this when you publish somewhere Mastheads does not connect to, or want to paste the article into another tool.

Editing after you publish

You can keep editing an article after it is published, then publish again:

On WordPress, publishing again updates the same post in place.
On Ghost, Webflow, Shopify, HubSpot and GoHighLevel, publishing again creates a new post and leaves the first one live. The publish panel tells you which will happen before you press the button.

On WordPress you can also Unpublish, which moves the post to your site's trash and keeps the article here as a draft.

Your edits, your work

Under our terms the articles are yours. Edit them, cut them down, combine them or rewrite them entirely. No credit back to us is required.