User:1013-josh/draft

Xelixes is the name of this sample article. Your article should start with a definition of what your topic is and basic information about it. The first time you mention the subject of your article, you should bold it. See how I bolded xelixes the first time I mentioned it, but I didn't bold it this time?

You can go on for several paragraphs in this introductory section, or you may find that one paragraph is enough. If you have more than one paragraph, make sure your paragraphs have a blank line between them, as these two do.

If you have many sections in your article, Wikipedia will automatically generate a "Contents" box like the one you see below.

Early history
Look, I just created a section for the history of xelixes. I could write a whole paragraph here, or more than that. Preferably more. I created a section by using a button on the formatting toolbar, but you can also do it by typing == Section Heading ==.

According to Manual of Style (headings), only the first word should be capitalized in section headings (unless the other words are proper nouns).

The Xonox incident
I can create subsections, too. This is a little short for a subsection. Subsections use three equal signs on each side, like this: === Subsection Heading ===

Slow down, cowboy
I doubt you'll need a sub-subsection, but if you do, it goes like this: ====SubSub====.

Don't do this

You can also bold text, but that's generally not a good way to create a section division.

Using links in body text
When you think your reader might want to know something extra about your subject, give them an internal link. You might occasionally want them to have an external link, but be careful with these. See External links for more guidance.

With internal links, be sure that your link points to the most appropriate article. For example, if you were writing about the Black Hills, the link Native Americans would be a better choice than Native Americans. (Click the links to see how they differ.) Remember that the display text of your link does not necessarily need to be the same as the title you link to, i.e. Native Americans produces Native Americans.

Another thing to remember about internal links is that generally you only use a link for the first instance of a word. If the word appears later in the article, don't link it again.

Using footnotes
In this first sentence, I am going to cite a book, one of my favorite novels. In this next sentence, I am going to cite a newspaper article, an example from the Hacker handbook. In this final sentence, I am going to cite a website, another example from the Hacker handbook. Are you paying attention to where I put the footnote in relation to the period at the end of the sentence?

To format a footnote, I type. If you have any questions about what I'm doing, click "Edit this page" to see what the raw text of the page looks like. (Note: If you copy anything from the raw text of this page, be sure that what you copy doesn't include   tags. Those tags are used to tell Wikipedia to ignore the formatting for a moment, and they will get you in trouble if you're not sure how to handle them.)

If you are going to be using a source in more than one footnote, you probably want to do what I am doing here. With the first footnote, I defined the name "Robinson." Now I can just keep citing it over and over without typing out the whole thing. It's kind of complicated to explain what I'm doing, so why don't you click "edit this page" and find out? Or you could read Help:Footnotes.

Footnotes should be formatted according to the guidelines in Hacker CMS-4c. But be careful! That section of the Hacker is a little funky. Use the numbered example (which is the proper format for a footnote), not the example below it (which is the proper format for a bibliography entry). For example, at CMS-4c(1), use the footnote format, which begins "William H. Rehnquist," not the bibliography format, which begins "Rehnquist, William H."

At the bottom of my page, I'll make a new header called "Footnotes" and there I'll type. All of my footnotes will show up there automatically. Really. You'll see.

Using references
In the references section, I will include all of the sources I use in my footnotes, as well as any general references. These references should be in bibliography format, according to MLA-4b. So instead of "William H. Rehnquist," it would be "Rehnquist, William H." Alphabetize this list. No page numbers in this section, unless you are referring to the page numbers of a work within a work (for example, an article within a newspaper or a chapter title within a book). Using asterisks to make a bulleted list is a good idea.

Sometimes this section is called a "Bibliography," but we're going to call it "References," which is a standard practice on Wikipedia and will help our heads from exploding by trying to remember too many different things.

Using the See Also section
In the See Also section, I will include links to related Wikipedia articles. Again, using asterisks to make a bulleted list is a good idea.

Using the External Links section
This section is for links to outside websites that might provide context for my article. External links should be formatted as Name of website, i.e. MN Speak website produces MN Speak website.

Note that I screwed up on this. I originally had you putting external links in the See Also section, but the Wikipedia Layout Guide calls for them to be in the External Links section.

The perfect article
Your Wikipedia article is a work in progress. After you finish your rough draft, we will work on developing it into The Perfect Article, as defined by Wikipedia. You may want to add some images. On Friday, I will teach you more about images. Don't worry about them yet, but you may want to bookmark them as you come across them.