Wikipedia:How to edit a page

London has public transport.

• A link to another Wiki article.
• Internally, the first letter of the target page is automatically capitalized and spaces are represented as underscores (typing an underscore in the link has the same effect as typing a space, but is not recommended).
• Thus the link above is to the URL en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_transport, which is the Wikipedia article with the name "Public transport". See also Wikipedia:Canonicalization.

London has [[public transport]].

San Francisco also has public transportation.

• Same target, different name.
• The target ("piped") text must be placed first, then the text that will be displayed second.

San Francisco also has
[[public transport|public transportation]].

San Francisco also has public transportation.

Examples include buses, taxicabs, and streetcars.

• Endings are blended into the link.
• Preferred style is to use this instead of a piped link, if possible.
• Blending can be suppressed by using <nowiki></nowiki> tags, which may be desirable in some instances. Example: a microsecond.

San Francisco also has
[[public transport]]ation.

Examples include [[bus]]es,
 [[taxicab]]s, and [[streetcar]]s.

a [[micro]]<nowiki>second
</nowiki>

See the Wikipedia:Manual of Style.

• A link to another namespace.

See the 
[[Wikipedia:Manual of Style]].

Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Italics is a link to a section within another page.

#Links and URLs is a link to another section on the current page.

Italics is a piped link to a section within another page.

• The part after the number sign (#) must match a section heading on the page. Matches must be exact in terms of spelling, case, and punctuation. Links to non-existent sections are not broken; they are treated as links to the top of the page.
• Include "| link title" to create a stylish (piped) link title.

[[Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Italics]] 
is a link to a section within another page.

[[#Links and URLs]] is a link
to another section on the 
current page.

[[Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Italics|Italics]] 
is a piped link to a section within 
another page.

Automatically hide stuff in parentheses: kingdom.

Automatically hide namespace: Village Pump.

Or both: Manual of Style

But not: [[Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Links|]]

• The server fills in the part after the pipe character (|) when you save the page. The next time you open the edit box you will see the expanded piped link. When previewing your edits, you will not see the expanded form until you press Save and Edit again. The same applies to links to sections within the same page (see previous entry).
• See Wikipedia:Pipe trick for details.

Automatically hide stuff
in parentheses:
[[kingdom (biology)|]].

Automatically hide namespace: 
[[Wikipedia:Village Pump|]].

Or both:
[[Wikipedia:
Manual of Style (headings)|]]

But not:
[[Wikipedia:
Manual of Style#Links|]]

National sarcasm society is a page that does not exist yet.

• You can create it by clicking on the link.
• To create a new page:
  1. Create a link to it on some other (related) page.
  2. Save that page.
  3. Click on the link you just made. The new page will open for editing.
• For more information, see How to start a page and check out Wikipedia's naming conventions.
• Please do not create a new article without linking to it from at least one other article.

[[National sarcasm society]]
is a page 
that does not exist yet.

Wikipedia:How to edit a page is a link to this page.

• Self links appear as bold text when the article is viewed.
• Do not use this technique to make the article name bold in the first paragraph; see the Manual of Style.

[[Wikipedia:How to edit a page]]
is a link to this page.

The character tilde (~) is used when adding a comment to a Talk page. You should sign your comment by appending four tildes (~~~~) to the comment so as to add your user name plus date/time:

Patricia Zhang 13:40, Jan 14, 2007 (UTC)

Adding three tildes (~~~) will add just your user name:

Patricia Zhang

and adding five tildes (~~~~~) gives the date/time alone:

13:40, Jan 14, 2007 (UTC)

• The first two both provide a link to your user page.

The character '''tilde''' (~) is used 
when adding a comment to a Talk page. 
You should sign your comment by 
appending four tildes (~~~~)
to the comment so as to add your 
user name plus date/time:
: ~~~~
Adding three tildes (~~~) will add 
just your user name:
: ~~~
and adding five tildes (~~~~~) gives 
the date/time alone:
: ~~~~~

• Redirect one article title to another by placing a directive like the one shown to the right on the first line of the article (such as at a page titled "USA").
• It is possible to redirect to a section. For example, a redirect to United States History will redirect to the United States page, to the History section if it exists.

#REDIRECT [[United States]]

#REDIRECT [[United States#History|United 
States History]] will redirect to the 
[[United States]] page, to the History 
section if it exists 

• Link to a page on the same subject in another language by placing a link of the form: [[language code:Title]] in the wiki text of the article.

For example in the article on Plankton, which is available on a lot of other wikis, the interlanguage links would look like so:

[[de:Plankton]] [[es:Plancton]] [[ru:Планктон]] [[simple:Plankton]]

• While it does not matter where you put these links while editing, it is recommended that these links be placed at the very end of the edit box.
• These will not be visible in the main text of the article on which they are placed but appear as links in the extreme left margin column of Wikipedia page as part of a separate box under the 'toolbox' titled 'in other languages'. You can check out the links to the corresponding page in wikipedias of other languages for this Wikipedia MOS help page itself.
• Please see Wikipedia:Interlanguage links and the list of languages and codes.

What links here and Related changes pages can be linked as: Special:Whatlinkshere/Wikipedia:How to edit a page and Special:Recentchangeslinked/Wikipedia:How to edit a page

'''What links here''' and
'''Related changes'''
pages can be linked as:
[[Special:Whatlinkshere/
Wikipedia:How to edit a page]]
and
[[Special:Recentchangeslinked/
Wikipedia:How to edit a page]]

A user's Contributions page can be linked as: Special:Contributions/UserName or Special:Contributions/192.0.2.0

A user's '''Contributions''' page
can be linked as:
[[Special:Contributions/UserName]]
or
[[Special:Contributions/192.0.2.0]]

• To put an article in a Wikipedia:Category, place a link like the one to the right anywhere in the article. As with interlanguage links, it does not matter where you put these links while editing as they will always show up in the same place when you save the page, but placement at the end of the edit box is recommended.

[[Category:Character sets]]

• To link to a Wikipedia:Category page without putting the article into the category, use an initial colon (:) in the link.

[[:Category:Character sets]]

Three ways to link to external (non-wiki) sources:

1. Bare URL: http://www.wikipedia.com/ (bad style)
2. Unnamed link: [1] (only used within article body for footnotes)
3. Named link: Wikipedia

See MetaWikiPedia:Interwiki_map for the list of shortcuts.

• Square brackets indicate an external link. Note the use of a space (not a pipe) to separate the URL from the link text in the "named" version.
• In the URL, all symbols must be among:
  A-Z a-z 0-9 . _ \ / ~ % - + & # ? ! = ( ) @
• If a URL contains a character not in this list, it should be encoded by using a percent sign (%) followed by the hex code of the character, which can be found in the table of ASCII printable characters. For example, the caret character (^) would be encoded in a URL as %5E.
• If the "named" version contains a closing square bracket "]", then you must use the HTML special character syntax, i.e. &#93; otherwise the MediaWiki software will prematurely interpret this as the end of the external link.
• There is a class that can be used to remove the arrow image from the external link. It is used in Template:Ref to stop the URL from expanding during printing. It should never be used in the main body of an article. However, there is an exception: wikilinks in Image markup. An example of the markup is as follows:
  • Markup: <span class="plainlinksneverexpand"> [http://www.sysinternals.com/ ntw2k/freeware/winobj.shtml WinObj]</span>
  • Display: WinObj
• See Wikipedia:External links for style issues.

Three ways to link to
external (non-wiki) sources:
# Bare URL:
http://en.wikipedia.org/
(bad style)
# Unnamed link:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/]
(only used within article
body for footnotes)
# Named link:
[http://en.wikipedia.org Wikipedia]

Linking to other wikis:

1. Interwiki link: Wiktionary:Hello
2. Interwiki link without prefix: Hello
3. Named interwiki link: Wiktionary definition of 'Hello'

• All of these forms lead to the URL http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Hello
• Note that interwiki links use the internal link style.
• See MetaWikiPedia:Interwiki_map for the list of shortcuts; if the site you want to link to is not on the list, use an external link (see above).
• See also Wikipedia:Wikimedia sister projects.

Linking to another language's wiktionary:

1. Wiktionary:fr:bonjour
2. bonjour
3. fr:bonjour

• All of these forms lead to the URL http://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/bonjour

Linking to other wikis:
# [[Interwiki]] link:
[[Wiktionary:Hello]]
# Interwiki link without prefix:
[[Wiktionary:Hello|]]
# Named interwiki link:
[[Wiktionary:Hello|
Wiktionary definition 
of 'Hello']]

Linking to another
language's wiktionary:
# [[Wiktionary:fr:bonjour]]
# [[Wiktionary:fr:bonjour|bonjour]]
# [[Wiktionary:fr:bonjour|]]

ISBN 012345678X

ISBN 0-12-345678-X

• Link to books using their ISBN. This is preferred to linking to a specific online bookstore, because it gives the reader a choice of vendors. However, if one bookstore or online service provides additional free information, such as table of contents or excerpts from the text, then a link to that source will aid the user and is recommended.
• ISBN links do not need any extra markup, provided you use one of the indicated formats.

ISBN 012345678X

ISBN 0-12-345678-X

Text mentioning RFC 4321 anywhere

• Link to Internet Engineering Task Force RFCs.

Text mentioning RFC 4321 
anywhere

Date formats:

1. July 20, 1969
2. 20 July 1969
3. 1969-07-20
4. 1969-07-20

• Link dates in one of the above formats, so that everyone can set their own display order. If logged in, you can use Special:Preferences to change your own date display setting.
• All of the above dates will appear as "20 July 1969" if you set your date display preference to "15 January 2001", but as "July 20, 1969" if you set it to "January 15, 2001", or as "1969-07-20" if you set it to "2001-01-15".

Date formats:
# [[July 20]], [[1969]]
# [[20 July]] [[1969]]
# [[1969]]-[[07-20]]
# [[1969-07-20]]

Special as-of links like this year needing future maintenance

Special [[WP:AO|as-of]] links 
like [[As of 2006|this year]]
needing future maintenance

Sound

• To include links to non image uploads such as sounds, use a "media" link. For images, see next section.

Some uploaded sounds are listed at Wikipedia:Sound.

[[media:Classical guitar scale.ogg|Sound]]

Link directly to edit for an existing page, or apply other link attributes.

• use {{fullurl:}}
• or use {{template:edit}} which conceals the edit label for page printing

{{fullurl:page name|action=edit}}

A picture: 
[[Image:wiki.png]]

With alternative text:
[[Image:wiki.png|Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.]]

• Alternative text, used when the image is unavailable or when the image is loaded in a text-only browser, or when spoken aloud, is strongly encouraged. See Alternate text for images for help on choosing it.

Floating to the right side of the page 
using the ''frame'' attribute and a caption:
[[Image:wiki.png|frame|Wikipedia Encyclopedia]]

• The frame tag automatically floats the image right.
• The caption is also used as alternate text.

Floating to the right side of the page 
using the ''thumb'' attribute and a caption:
[[Image:wiki.png|thumb|Wikipedia Encyclopedia]]

• The thumb tag automatically floats the image right.
• The caption is also used as alternate text.
• An enlarge icon is placed in the lower right corner.

Floating to the right side of the page
''without'' a caption:
[[Image:wiki.png|right|Wikipedia Encyclopedia]]

• The help topic on extended image syntax explains more options.

A picture resized to 30 pixels...
[[Image:wiki.png|30 px]]

• The help topic on extended image syntax explains more options.

Image:wiki.png

Linking directly to the description page
of an image:
[[:Image:wiki.png]]

• Clicking on an image displayed on a page

(such as any of the ones above) also leads to the description page

Image of the jigsaw globe logo

Linking directly to an image
without displaying it:
[[:media:wiki.png|Image of the jigsaw globe logo]]

• To include links to images shown as links instead of drawn on the page, use a "media" link.

Example:
<div style="display:inline;
width:220px; float:right;">
Place images here </div>

Example: {| align=right
|-
| 
Place images here
|}

Italicized text
Bold text
Italicized & Bold text

''Italicized text''
'''Bold text'''
'''''Italicized & Bold text'''''

Syntax highlighting for source code.

Computer code has a colored background and more stringent formatting. Suppose we want to define int main():

#include <iostream.h>
int main ( int argc,  char **argv ) {
    cout << "Hello World!";
    return 0;
}

Computer code has a colored background and more stringent formatting. Suppose we want to define int main():

<source lang=c>#include <iostream.h>
int main ( int argc,  char **argv ) {
    cout << "Hello World!";
    return 0;
}</source>

You can use small text for captions.

You can use <small>small text</small> for captions.

Better stay away from big text, unless it's within small text.

Better stay away from <big>big text</big>, unless
<small> it's <big>within</big> small</small> text.

You can strike out deleted material and underline new material.

You can also mark deleted material and inserted material using logical markup. For backwards compatibility better combine this potentially ignored new logical with the old physical markup.

• When editing regular Wikipedia articles, just make your changes and do not mark them up in any special way.
• When editing your own previous remarks in talk pages, it is sometimes appropriate to mark up deleted or inserted material.

You can <s>strike out deleted material</s>
and <u>underline new material</u>.

You can also mark <del>deleted material</del> and
<ins>inserted material</ins> using logical markup.
For backwards compatibility better combine this
potentially ignored new <del>logical</del> with
the old <s><del>physical</del></s> markup.

Suppressing interpretation of markup:
Link → (''to'') the [[Wikipedia FAQ]]

• Used to show literal data that would otherwise have special meaning.
• Escape all wiki markup, including that which looks like HTML tags.
• Does not escape HTML character references.
• To escape HTML character references such as &rarr; use &amp;rarr;

<nowiki>Link &rarr; (''to'') 
the [[Wikipedia FAQ]]</nowiki>

Commenting page source:
not shown when viewing page

• Used to leave comments in a page for future editors.
• Note that most comments should go on the appropriate Talk page.

<!-- comment here -->

Diacritical marks:
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

• See special characters.

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:
™ © ® ¢ € ¥
£ ¤

™ © ® ¢ € ¥ 
£ ¤

Subscripts:
x₁ x₂ x₃ or
x₀ x₁ x₂ x₃ x₄
x₅ x₆ x₇ x₈ x₉

Superscripts:
x¹ x² x³ or
x⁰ x¹ x² x³ x⁴
x⁵ x⁶ x⁷ x⁸ x⁹

• The latter methods of sub/superscripting cannot be used in the most general context, as they rely on Unicode support which may not be present on all users' machines. For the 1-2-3 superscripts, it is nevertheless preferred when possible (as with units of measurement) because most browsers have an easier time formatting lines with it.

ε₀ = 8.85 × 10⁻¹² C² / J m.

1 hectare = 1 E4 m²

x<sub>1</sub> x<sub>2</sub> x<sub>3</sub> or
<br/>
x&#8320; x&#8321; x&#8322; x&#8323; x&#8324;
<br/>
x&#8325; x&#8326; x&#8327; x&#8328; x&#8329;

x<sup>1</sup> x<sup>2</sup> x<sup>3</sup> or
<br/>
x&#8304; x&sup1; x&sup2; x&sup3; x&#8308;
<br/>
x&#8309; x&#8310; x&#8311; x&#8312; x&#8313;

&epsilon;<sub>0</sub> =
8.85 &times; 10<sup>&minus;12</sup>
C&sup2; / J m.

1 [[hectare]] = [[1 E4 m&sup2;]]

Greek characters:
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

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

Mathematical characters:
∫ ∑ ∏ √ − ± ∞
≈ ∝ ≡ ≠ ≤ ≥
× · ÷ ∂ ′ ″
∇ ‰ ° ∴ ℵ ø
∈ ∉ ∩ ∪ ⊂ ⊃ ⊆ ⊇
¬ ∧ ∨ ∃ ∀
⇒ ⇐ ⇓ ⇑ ⇔
→ ↓ ↑ ← ↔

• See also WikiProject Mathematics and TeX.

∫ ∑ ∏ √ − ± ∞
≈ ∝ ≡ ≠ ≤ ≥
× · ÷ ∂ ′ ″
∇ ‰ ° ∴ ℵ ø
∈ ∉ ∩ ∪ ⊂ ⊃ ⊆ ⊇
¬ ∧ ∨ ∃ ∀ 
⇒ ⇐ ⇓ ⇑ ⇔
→ ↓ ↑ ← ↔

sinx + lny

x = 0

Ordinary text should use wiki markup for emphasis, and should not use <i> or <b>. However, mathematical formulae often use italics, and sometimes use bold, for reasons unrelated to emphasis. Complex formulae should use <math> markup, and simple formulae may use <math>; or <i> and <b>; or '' and '''. According to WikiProject Mathematics, wiki markup is preferred over HTML markup like <i> and <b>.

<math>\,\! \sin x + \ln y</math>
sin''x'' + ln''y''

<math>\mathbf{x} = 0</math>
'''x''' = 0

Spacing in simple math formulae:
Obviously, x ² ≥ 0 is true when x is a real number.

• To space things out without allowing line breaks to interrupt the formula, use non-breaking spaces: &nbsp;.

Obviously, ''x''² ≥ 0 is true 
when ''x'' is a real number.

Complicated formulae:

• See Help:Formula for how to use <math>.
• A formula displayed on a line by itself should probably be indented by using the colon (:) character.

: <math>\sum_{n=0}^\infty \frac{x^n}{n!}</math>

The nowiki tag ignores [[Wiki]] ''markup''. It reformats text by removing newlines and multiple spaces. It still interprets special characters: →

<nowiki>
The nowiki tag ignores [[Wiki]] ''markup''.
It reformats text by removing newlines 
and multiple spaces.
It still interprets special
characters: &rarr;
</nowiki>

The pre tag ignores [[Wiki]] ''markup''.
It also doesn't     reformat text.
It still interprets special characters: →

<pre>
The pre tag ignores [[Wiki]] ''markup''.
It also doesn't     reformat text.
It still interprets special characters:
 &rarr;
</pre>

Leading spaces are another way to preserve formatting. However, it will make the whole page fail to render properly in some browsers, such as IE7, thus making the page unreadable.

Putting a space at the beginning of each line
stops the text   from being reformatted. 
It still interprets Wiki markup and
special characters: →

Leading spaces are another way 
to preserve formatting.
 Putting a space at the beginning of each line
 stops the text   from being reformatted. 
 It still interprets [[Wiki]] ''markup'' and
 special characters: →