Help:Wikitext

The markup language called wikitext, also known as wiki markup or wikicode, consists of the syntax and keywords used by the MediaWiki software to format a page. (Note the lowercase spelling of these terms.) To learn how to see this hypertext markup, and to save an edit, see Help:Editing. Generally, coding can be copied and pasted, without writing new code. There is a short list of markup and tips at Help:Cheatsheet.

In addition to wikitext, some HTML elements are also allowed for presentation formatting. See Help:HTML in wikitext for information on this.

Sections
Article sections in a page will follow that page's lead or introduction and, if there are four or more, the table of contents.

Section headings
The  through   markup are headings for the sections with which they are associated.
 * A single = is styled as the article title and should not be used within an article.
 * Headings are styled through CSS and add an  link. See this section for the relevant CSS.
 * Four or more headings cause a table of contents to be generated automatically.
 * Do not use any markup after the final heading markup – this will either break the heading, or will cause the heading to not be included in an edit summary.

Templates: fake heading for use in documentation.

Horizontal rule
The horizontal rule represents a paragraph-level thematic break. Do not use in article content, as rules are used only after main sections, and this is automatic.

HTML equivalent: (which can be indented, whereas   forces the TOC to appear at the normal location regardless of the number of headings.
 * disables the TOC entirely.
 * TOC limit template can be used to control the depth of subsections included in the TOC. This is useful where the TOC is long and unwieldy.
 * Category:Wikipedia table of contents templates contains a number of specialized TOC templates.

Line breaks
Line breaks or newlines are used to add whitespace between lines, such as separating paragraphs.
 * A line break that is visible in the content is inserted by pressing Enter twice.
 * It's good practice to do this by itself when publishing changes. Leave additional changes to another edit because otherwise only the line break will be highlighted in the diff.
 * Pressing Enter once will place a line break in the markup, but it will not show in the rendered content, except when using list markup.


 * Markup such as bold or italics will be terminated at a line break.
 * Blank lines within indented wikitext should not be added due to accessibility issues.

HTML equivalent: or  can be used to break line layout.

Templates for line breaks:
 * break can add multiple line breaks.
 * - and clear adds a break with styling, to clear floating elements. Often used to prevent text from flowing next to unrelated tables or images.

Unbulleted list:
 * plainlist and unbulleted list both create an unbulleted list.

Indent text
Indentation is most commonly used on talk pages.

Templates: outdent, outdent2

Blockquote
When there is a need for separating a block of text. This is useful for (as the name says) inserting blocks of quoted (and cited) text.

This uses an HTML tag; template quote results in the same render.

Center text
Template center uses the same markup. To center a table, see Help:Table. Please do not use  tags, as it is obsolete.

Align text to right
You can align content in a separate container:

Or; make the text float around it:

Lists
Do not leave blank lines between items in a list unless there is a reason to do so, since this causes the MediaWiki software to interpret each item as beginning a new list.

Description lists
To list terms and definitions, start a new line with a semicolon followed by the term. Then, type a colon followed by a definition. The format can also be used for other purposes, such as make and models of vehicles, etc.

Description lists (formerly definition lists, and a.k.a. association lists) consist of group names corresponding to values. Group names (terms) are in bold. Values (definitions) are indented. Each group must include one or more definitions. For a single or first value, the  can be placed on the same line after   – but subsequent values must be placed on separate lines.

HTML equivalent: , 

Templates: defn

Retaining newlines and spaces
The MediaWiki software suppresses single newlines and converts lines starting with a space to preformatted text in a dashed box. HTML suppresses multiple spaces. It is often desirable to retain these elements for poems, lyrics, mottoes, oaths and the like. The Poem extension adds HTML-like  tags to maintain newlines and spaces. These tags may be used inside other tags such as ; the template provides a convenient shorthand. CSS styles may be applied to this tag, e.g.:.

Poems and their translation can be presented side by side, and the language can be indicated with. Following the last side-by-side block, must be used to cancel   and to re-establish normal flow. Note that this method does not require a table and its columns to achieve the side-by-side presentation.

Markup Renders as Frère Jacques, frère Jacques, Dormez-vous? Dormez-vous? Sonnez les matines! Sonnez les matines! Ding, dang, dong. Ding, dang, dong. Are you sleeping? Are you sleeping? Brother John, Brother John, Morning bells are ringing! Morning bells are ringing! Ding, dang, dong. Ding, dang, dong.

Special characters
Special characters can often be displayed using numeric character references or character entity references. See Character encodings in HTML for more information. For example,  and   both render &Agrave; (A-grave). Percent-encoding can't be used, as it works only in URLs.

Diacritical marks
Diacritic marks, using character entity references.

Punctuation special characters
Using character entity references.

Escaping punctuation characters
The, , and   markup tags are also available, for writing "[", "{", "&", "}", "]" for example. These tags prevent these characters from being recognised as wiki markup, which is a possibility in some circumstances.

Commercial symbols
Using character entity references.

Greek characters
Using character entity references.

Egyptian hieroglyphs
WikiHiero is a software extension that renders Egyptian hieroglyphs as PNG images using hiero HTML-like tags.

Example:

Subscripts and superscripts

 * The Manual of Style prefers the and  formats, for example  . So this should be used under most circumstances.
 * The latter methods of sub/superscripting cannot be used in the most general context, as they rely on Unicode support that may not be present on all users' machines.

Characters in the Private Use Area, and invisible formatting characters
Invisible and PUA (Private Use Areas) characters should be avoided where possible. When needed, they should both be replaced with their (hexa)decimal code values (as "&#(x)...;"). This renders invisible characters visible, for manual editing, and allows AWB to process pages with PUA characters. The latter should also be tagged with the PUA template for tracking and future maintenance.

Mathematical characters

 * See also Mathematical symbols, WikiProject Mathematics and TeX.

Mathematical formulae

 * Formulae that include mathematical letters, like $x$, and operators like  should not use the plain letter  . See math font formatting. For a comprehensive set of symbols, and comparison between  tags and the math template see section TeX vs HTML.


 * The tag typesets using LaTeX markup, which may render as an image or as HTML, depending on environmental settings. The  tag is best for the complex formula on its own line in an image format. If you use this tag to put a formula in the line with text, put it in the nowrap template.


 * The math template uses HTML, and will size-match a serif font, and will also prevent line-wrap. All templates are sensitive to the  sign, so remember to replace   with   in template input, or start the input with  . Use wiki markup   and   inside the math template, as well as other HTML entities. The math template is best for typeset formulas in line with the text.

Spacing in simple math formulae

 * Using   to prevent line break is not needed; the math template will prevent line breaks anyway; you can use if you need an explicit line break inside a formula.

Complicated formulae

 * See Help:Displaying a formula for how to use.
 * A formula displayed on a line by itself should be indented using 

Indenting by using the colon character (i.e. using   instead of  ) is discouraged for accessibility reasons.

Wikilinks
Wikilinks are used in wikitext markup to produce internal links between pages. You create wikilinks by putting double square brackets around text designating the title of the page you want to link to. Thus,  will be rendered as Texas. Optionally, you can use a vertical bar (|) to customize the link title. For example, typing  will produce Lone Star State, a link that is displayed as " Lone Star State " but in fact links to Texas.

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 hereafter is to the Web address, which is the Wikipedia article with the name "Public transport". See also Canonicalization.
 * A red link is a page that doesn't exist yet; it can be created by clicking on the link.
 * A link to its own page will appear only as bold text.

Renamed link

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

Automatically rename links

 * Simply typing the pipe character | after a link will automatically rename the link in certain circumstances. 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 Pipe trick for details.

Blend link

 * Endings are blended into the link.
 * Exception: a trailing apostrophe (') and any characters following the apostrophe are not blended.
 * Preferred style is to use this instead of a piped link, if possible.
 * Blending can be suppressed by using the tag, which may be desirable in some instances.

Link to a section of a page

 * The part after the hash 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 beginning of the page.
 * Include "| link title" to create a stylish (piped) link title.
 * If sections have the same title, add a number to link to any but the first. goes to the third section named "Example section". You can use the pipe and retype the section title to display the text without the # symbol.

Create a page link

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

Redirects

 * 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 "US").
 * It is possible to redirect to a section. For example, a redirect to United States will redirect to the History section of the United States page, if it exists.

Link to another namespace

 * The full page name should be included in double square brackets.

Link to the same article in another language (interlanguage links)

 * To link to a corresponding page in another language, use the form:.
 * It is recommended interlanguage links be placed at the very end of the article.
 * Interlanguage links are NOT visible within the formatted article, but instead appear as language links on the sidebar (to the left) under the menu section "languages".


 * NOTE: To create an inline link (a clickable link within the text) to any foreign language article, see Help:Interlanguage links and consider the usage notes.

Interwiki link

 * Interwiki links link to any page on other wikis. Interwikimedia links link to other Wikimedia wikis.
 * Note that interwikimedia links use the internal link style, with double square brackets.
 * See Meta-Wiki: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 also Wikimedia sister projects.

Categories

 * To put an article in a category, place a link like  into the article. As with interlanguage links, placing these links at the end of the article is recommended.
 * To link to a category page without putting the article into the category, use a colon prefix (":Category") in the link.

Media link

 * 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 Sound.

Links directly into edit mode

 * These create links that directly go to the edit or view source tab. For example, to create links to the edit tab for this page, either of the following works:

Links partially italicized

 * Linking to a page with a title containing words that are usually italicized, such as the Hindenburg disaster article.

Musical notation
Musical notation is added by using the p extension HTML-like tag. For example:

Images
Only images that have been uploaded to Wikipedia or Wikimedia Commons can be used. To upload images, use the Commons upload wizard for photos you have taken, and the Wikipedia upload page if there may be copyright issues. You can find the uploaded image on the image list.

See the Wikipedia's image use policy for the policy used on Wikipedia.

For further help on images, including some more versatile abilities, see the picture tutorial and extended image syntax.

Tables
There are two ways to build tables:
 * Using specific wiki markup: (see Help:Table).
 * Using HTML elements:, , or.

Columns
Use colbegin and colend templates to produce columns.

References and citing sources
Making a reference citing a printed or online source can be accomplished by using the ref wiki markup tags. Inside these tags details about the reference are added.

Details about the citation can be provided using a structure provided by various templates; the table below lists some typical citation components.

Templates and transcluding pages
Examples for templates:, $2x &times; 4y &divide; 6z + 8 &minus; y⁄z^{2} = 0$, ,

Templates are segments of wiki markup that are meant to be copied automatically ("transcluded") into a page. They are specified by putting the template's name in. Most templates are pages in the Template namespace, but it is possible to transclude mainspace pages (articles) by using.

There are three pairs of tags that can be used in wikitext to control how transclusion affects parts of a template or article. They determine whether or not wikitext renders, either in its own article, which we will call "here", or in another article where it is transcluded, which we will call "there". There can be several such section "elements". Also, they can be nested. All possible renderings are achievable. For example, to render there one or more sections of the page here use   tags. To append text there, wrap the addition in   tags before, within, or after the section. To omit portions of the section, nest   tags within it.
 *  :  the content will not be rendered there. These tags have no effect here.
 *  :  the content will render only there, and  will not render here (like invisible ink made visible by means of transclusion).
 *  :  the content will render here and will render there, but it will only render there what is between these tags.

If a page is transcluded without transclusion markup, it may cause an unintentional categorization. Any page transcluding it will contain the same category as the original page. Wrap the category markup with   tags to prevent incorrect categorization.

Some templates take parameters, as well, which you separate with the pipe character.

Talk and project pages
These are likely to be helpful on talk and project pages.

Signing comments

 * The tilde character (~) is used when signing a comment on a talk page. Your username provides a link to your user page.

Linking to old revisions of pages, diffs, and specific history pages

 * The external link function is mainly used for these. Open an old revision or diff, and copy the URL from the address bar, pasting it where you want it.


 * You can also use an internal diff link. Unlike the template diff, this kind of link can even be used in edit summaries.


 * If the diff intended to be shown is between an immediately previous revision, the first parameter can be dropped.


 * For an old revision, you can also use a permalink. Though here only the main text is guaranteed to be retained (images and templates will be shown as they are today, not as they were at the time).

What links here, and recent changes linked

 * The following markup can be used. For example, for the article Beetroot:

User edits

 * Link to a user's contributions page.

Coloring and highlighting text

 * Using the Color and Font color templates:

Example text
The family of templates can be used to highlight example text. These templates do not work in mainspace—that is, in regular articles—they are intended for use on project pages (such as Manual of Style), help pages, and user pages.

Show deleted or inserted text

 * When editing regular Wikipedia articles, just make your changes, and do not mark them up in any special way, except when the article itself discusses deleted or inserted content, such as an amendment to a statute:
 * to indicate deleted content, use 
 * to indicate inserted content, use <ins ></ins>
 * This also applies to changing one's own talk page comments.

Strikethrough
The Strikethrough template marks up a span of text with the <s ></s> tag. This is usually renderend visually by drawing a horizontal line through it. Outside of articles, it can be used to mark something as no longer accurate or relevant without removing it from view. Do not use it, however, to indicate document edits. For that, use the <del ></del> tag instead. See for details.

Limiting formatting / escaping wiki markup
A few different kinds of formatting will tell the wiki to display things as you typed them – what you see is what you get!

Nowiki

 * <nowiki ></nowiki> (wiki markup contained between these two tags is displayed as normal text)
 * (wiki markup that is interrupted by this tag is displayed as normal text, as detailed in examples below)

These two kinds of nowiki operate in different ways, but both neutralize the rendering of wiki markup as shown in the examples below. For example, the characters that have wiki markup meaning at the beginning of a line (*, #, ; and :) can be rendered in normal text. Editors can normalize the font of characters trailing a wikilink, which would otherwise appear in the wikilink font. And newlines added to wikitext for readability can be ignored.

Note to template editors: tag works only on its source page, not the target.

The rest of the section consists of simple, live examples showing how a single nowiki tag escapes entire linkage structures, beyond wikilink and :


 * fullpagename | label'' ]]
 * [[ fullpagename | {{ pagename } } ] ]
 * [[ fullpagename | {{ pagename } } ] ]

Unless you use the two "balanced" nowiki tags, troubleshooting strip marker errors and template parameter-handling inconsistencies is a risk. Also, a rendering error may arise when two [ [...]] square brackets are on the same line, or two { {...}} curly brackets are in the same section, but only when the two have the nowiki markup placed inconsistently.

Displaying wikilinks
(These are all live examples.)

For nested structures, escaping an inner structure escapes its outer structure too.

For two, first pipes, two nowiki tags are required:

Displaying template calls
For templates, put nowiki before the first pipe. If a parameter has a wikilink, put it in that, an inmost position.

Displaying magic words
For input parameters,, , just write them out, unless they have a default (which goes behind their pipe): &rarr;

For a parser function nowiki goes between bracketing-pair characters, or anywhere before the : colon.

Behavioral switches expect the tag anywhere:

Displaying tags
Tags do not display; they are just markup. If you want them to, insert after an < opening angle bracket; it goes only in the very front. Opening tags and closing tags must be treated separately.

Use template tag instead of nowiki tags to display parser tags:

Character entities, nowiki cannot escape. To escape HTML or special character entities, replace  with. For example,  &rarr;

To display a nowiki tag, you can (1) use tag, (2) replace the < left angle bracket with its HTML character entity, or (3) nest nowiki tags in each other:

Nowiki tags do not otherwise nest, so it is the second and fourth that displays:

These simply scan from left to right. The paired tags cannot overlap, because the very first pair-match nullifies any intervening tags inside. Unbalanced tags always display.

Nowiki tags do not display table markup, use <pre ></pre>.

Pre
is a parser tag that emulates the HTML tag. It defines preformatted text that is displayed in a fixed-width font and is enclosed in a dashed box. HTML-like and wiki markup tags are escaped, spaces and line breaks are preserved, but HTML elements are parsed.

As is a parser tag, it escapes wikitext and HTML tags. This can be prevented with the use of within the, making it act more like its HTML equivalent:

Invisible HTML tags can also be inserted by preceding text with a space character, like:

wiki markup &amp;

Alternatively, consider using pre template or p.

Invisible text (comments)
It's uncommon – but on occasion acceptable for notes to other editors – to add a hidden comment within the text of an article. These comments are visible only when editing or viewing the source of a page. Most comments should go on the appropriate Talk page. The format is to surround the hidden text with " " and " " and may cover several lines, e.g.:

Another way to include a comment in the wiki markup uses the Void template, which can be abbreviated as ^. This template "expands" to the empty string, generating no HTML output; it is visible only to people editing the wiki source. Thus operates similarly to the comment. The main difference is that the template version can be nested, while attempting to nest HTML comments produces odd results.

Variables
 is the number of pages in the main namespace that contain a link and are not a redirect. This includes full articles, stubs containing a link, and disambiguation pages.

' is the genitive (possessive) grammatical form of the month name, as used in some languages but not in English; ' is the nominative (subject) form, as usually seen in English.

In languages where it makes a difference, you can use constructs like  to convert a word from the nominative case to some other case. For example,  means the same as.

HTML
Many HTML tags can be used in wiki markup. You can check your HTML by using markup validation.