How to Edit Wiki pages
Visit the main Wiki help page for more information
The following is from: Editing Overview.
Sections, paragraphs, lists and lines
What it looks like | What you type |
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Start your sections with header lines:
New section Subsection Sub-subsection |
== New section == === Subsection === ==== Sub-subsection ==== |
CategoriesUse categories and sub-categories to organize the wiki. Add a category to your page and the page will show up on that category page. For a subcategory you must do a little more work. A subcategory turns a category into a subcategory.
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[[Category:Commons]] [[Category:Global Commons]] |
A single newline has no effect on the layout. These can be used to separate sentences within a paragraph. Some editors find that this aids editing and improves the diff function. But an empty line starts a new paragraph. |
A single [[wikipedia:newline|newline]] has no effect on the layout. These can be used to separate sentences within a paragraph. Some editors find that this aids editing and improves the ''diff'' function. But an empty line starts a new paragraph. |
You can break lines without starting a new paragraph. |
You can break lines<br/> without starting a new paragraph. |
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* Lists are easy to do: ** start every line with a star *** more stars means deeper levels |
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# Numbered lists are also good ## very organized ## easy to follow |
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* You can even do mixed lists *# and nest them *#* like this |
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; Definition list : list of definitions ; item : the item's definition |
A manual newline starts a new paragraph.
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: A colon indents a line or paragraph. A manual newline starts a new paragraph. |
IF a line starts with a space THEN it will be formatted exactly as typed; in a fixed-width font; lines won't wrap; ENDIF this is useful for: * pasting preformatted text; * algorithm descriptions; * program source code * ASCII art; * chemical structures; WARNING If you make it wide, you force the whole page to be wide and hence less readable. Never start ordinary lines with spaces. |
IF a line starts with a space THEN it will be formatted exactly as typed; in a fixed-width font; lines won't wrap; ENDIF this is useful for: * pasting preformatted text; * algorithm descriptions; * program source code * ASCII art; * chemical structures; |
<center>Centered text.</center> |
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A horizontal dividing line: above
and below. Mainly useful for separating threads on Talk pages. |
A horizontal dividing line: above ---- and below. |
Links, URLs
What it looks like | What you type |
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Sue is reading the video policy.
Thus the link above is to http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_policy, which is the page with the name "Video policy". |
Sue is reading the [[video policy]]. |
Link to a section on a page, e.g. List_of_cities_by_country#Morocco (links to non-existent sections aren't really broken, they are treated as links to the page, i.e. to the top) |
[[List_of_cities_by_country#Morocco]]. |
Same target, different name: answers.
(This is called a piped link). |
Same target, different name: [[User:Larry Sanger|answers]] |
Endings are blended into the link: testing, genes |
Endings are blended into the link: [[test]]ing, [[gene]]s |
Automatically hide stuff in parentheses: kingdom. Automatically hide namespace: Village pump. The server fills in the part after the | when you save the page. Next time you open the edit box you will see the expanded piped link. A preview interprets the abbreviated form correctly, but does not expand it yet in the edit box. Press Save and again Edit, and you will see the expanded version. The same applies for the following feature. |
Automatically hide stuff in parentheses: [[kingdom (biology)|]]. Automatically hide namespace: [[Wikipedia:Village pump|]]. |
When adding a comment to a Talk page,
you should sign it. You can do this by adding three tildes for your user name: or four for user name plus date/time:
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When adding a comment to a Talk page, you should sign it. You can do this by adding three tildes for your user name: : ~~~ or four for user name plus date/time: : ~~~~ |
The weather in London is a page that doesn't
exist yet.
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[[The weather in London]] is a page that doesn't exist yet. |
Redirect one article title to another by putting text like this in its first line. |
#REDIRECT [[United States]] |
A link to the page on the same subject in another language or, more generally, to a page on another wiki: fr:Wikipédia:Aide. For more info see MediaWiki User's Guide: Interwiki linking. |
[[fr:Wikipédia:Aide]], [[:fr:Wikipédia:Aide]] |
"What links here" and "Related changes" can be linked as: Special:Whatlinkshere/Wikipedia:How to edit a page and Special:Recentchangeslinked/Wikipedia:How to edit a page |
[[Special:Whatlinkshere/ Wikipedia:How to edit a page]] and [[Special:Recentchangeslinked/ Wikipedia:How to edit a page]] |
External link: Nupedia | External link: [http://www.nupedia.com Nupedia] |
Or just give the URL: http://www.nupedia.com. | Or just give the URL: http://www.nupedia.com. |
To link to books, you can use ISBN links. ISBN 0123456789X See MediaWiki User's Guide: ISBN links |
ISBN 0123456789X |
To include links to non-image uploads such as sounds, use a "media" link.
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[[media:Sg_mrob.ogg|Sound]] |
Use links for dates, so everyone can set their own display order. Use Special:Preferences to change your own date display setting. | [[July 20]], [[1969]] , [[20 July]] [[1969]] and [[1969]]-[[07-20]]will all appear as 20 July 1969 if you set your date display preference to 1 January 2001. |
Images
What it looks like | What you type |
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A picture: GT/GMC
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A picture: [[Image:Wiki.jpg]] or, with alternate text (strongly encouraged) [[Image:Wiki.jpg|GT/GMC]] Web browsers render alternate text when not displaying an image -- for example, when the image isn't loaded, or in a text-only browser, or when spoken aloud. See Alternate text for images for help on choosing alternate text. |
Clicking on an uploaded image displays a description page, which you can also link directly to: Image:Wiki.png |
[[:Image:Wiki.png]] |
To include links to images shown as links instead of drawn on the page, use a "media" link.
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[[media:Tornado.jpg|Image of a Tornado]] |
Character formatting
What it looks like | What you type |
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Emphasize, strongly, very strongly.
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''Emphasize'', '''strongly''', '''''very strongly'''''. |
You can also write italic and bold if the desired effect is a specific font style rather than emphasis, as in mathematical formulae:
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You can also write <i>italic</i> and <b>bold</b> if the desired effect is a specific font style rather than emphasis, as in mathematical formulas: :<b>F</b> = <i>m</i><b>a</b> |
A typewriter font for technical terms. | A typewriter font for <tt>technical terms</tt>. |
You can use small text for captions. | You can use <small>small text</small> for captions. |
You can and underline new material. |
You can <strike>strike out deleted material</strike> and <u>underline new material</u>. |
Umlauts and accents: (See MediaWiki User's Guide: Creating special characters) |
è é ê ë ì í À Á Â Ã Ä Å Æ Ç È É Ê Ë Ì Í Î Ï Ñ Ò Ó Ô Õ Ö Ø Ù Ú Û Ü ß à á â ã ä å æ ç è é ê ë ì í î ï ñ ò ó ô œ õ ö ø ù ú û ü ÿ |
Punctuation: |
¿ ¡ « » § ¶ † ‡ • — |
Commercial symbols: |
™ © ® ¢ € ¥ £ ¤ |
Subscript: x2 Superscript: x2 or x²
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Subscript: x<sub>2</sub> Superscript: x<sup>2</sup> or x² ε<sub>0</sub> = 8.85 × 10<sup>−12</sup> C² / J m. 1 [[hectare]] = [[1 E4 m²]] |
Greek characters: α β γ δ ε ζ |
α β γ δ ε ζ η θ ι κ λ μ ν ξ ο π ρ σ ς τ υ φ χ ψ ω Γ Δ Θ Λ Ξ Π Σ Φ Ψ Ω |
Math characters: |
∫ ∑ ∏ √ − ± ∞ ≈ ∝ ≡ ≠ ≤ ≥ → × · ÷ ∂ ′ ″ ∇ ‰ ° ∴ ℵ ø ∈ ∉ ∩ ∪ ⊂ ⊃ ⊆ ⊇ ¬ ∧ ∨ ∃ ∀ ⇒ ⇔ → ↔ |
x2 ≥ 0 true.
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<i>x</i><sup>2</sup> ≥ 0 true. |
Complicated formulae:
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<math>\sum_{n=0}^\infty \frac{x^n}{n!}</math> |
Suppressing interpretation of markup:
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<nowiki>Link → (<i>to</i>) the [[FAQ]]</nowiki> |
Commenting page source:
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<!-- comment here --> |
HTML Tables
HTML tables can be quite useful as well. For details on how to use them and discussion about when they are appropriate, see MediaWiki User's Guide: Using tables.
- Don't bother, there is nothing; but hopefully someone will do a bit of work here as tables can be very useful in conveying a structure which I call, provisionally, the Holistic Knowledge Base.
- The need I feel is about classifying (grouping) subjects and subcategories of descending levels. A simple list like the list of P2P Domains (http://p2pfoundation.net/The_Foundation_for_P2P_Alternatives) is inadequate. It can not suggest "neighborhood" relations, for example, between certain groups of subjects. Janosabel 10:43, 26 September 2011 (UTC)
- Don't bother, there is nothing; but hopefully someone will do a bit of work here as tables can be very useful in conveying a structure which I call, provisionally, the Holistic Knowledge Base.
Templates
Some text on a page may correspond in the edit box to just a reference to another page, in the form {{name}}, referring to the page "Template:name". This is called a template. For changing that text, edit that other page. Sometimes a separate edit link is provided for this purpose. A convenient way to put such a link in a template in Wikipedia is with wikipedia:Template:ed.
Page protection
In a few cases the link labeled "MediaWiki:Editthispage" is replaced by the text "Protected page" (or equivalents in the language of the project). In that case the page can not be edited.
Separating edits
When moving or copying a piece of text within a page or from another page, and also making other edits, it is useful to separate these edits. This way the diff function can be usefully applied for checking these other edits.