User:Cullen328/Sandbox/Tips for new editors

Tips for new editors An article on Wikipedia should begin with the name of the article in BOLD. Please click "edit" at the top of this page to view the editing code for this entire page. You can see that bold text can be generated simply by placing three single quotes before and after the text that you want to be rendered bold.

Italics
A variation of BOLD is to put just two single quotes before and after a word (or group of words). The result is some words in italics. Click the "edit" link to see how I italicized those words.

Sections
For ease in reading Wikipedia articles, they should be organized into sections. In the editing code, all you have to do is add two equal signs before the section name, and then two equal signs after the section name. The Wikipedia software will then create a new section of the article for you.

Table of contents
Once you have created a few sections, the Wikipedia software will automatically create a Table of contents for the article, and will update it automatically if you create new sections or subsections. It will also create a clickable "edit" function for just that section, so you don't have to read the editing code for the entire page to make editorial changes, but only the code for that specific section of the article. Click on "edit" for this section to see the code for this particular section.

Wikilinks
There are several types of links available in Wikipedia coding. Links to other articles on Wikipedia are among the most important. Let's say that I want to mention "George Washington" in an article, and let's say a hypothetical reader in Bangladesh doesn't know that much about George Washington. When I write the Wikipedia code for the article, all I have to do is put two square brackets in front of the name "George Washington" and two square brackets after the name "George Washington". I've actually done that here: George Washington. You can't see the square brackets, but instead, you see the name in blue. If you click on the blue George Washington, you will be transferred to his biography. If you click on the blue colored word "blue", you will be transferred to the article about the color blue.

The text inside of the double square brackets has to correspond to the name of a Wikipedia article (or a "redirect" or established alternate name for that article)

Piping
Sometimes, a Wikipedia article name is too long or unwieldy for the flow of your prose. Let's say, for example, that you are writing an article that will mention various cities of the San Francisco Bay Area. Because San Francisco is a distinctive city name known world-wide, a simple link to San Francisco works fine. The dominant meaning of "San Francisco" is the city in California. However, a link to just Berkeley takes me to a "disambiguation" page. That's because the word "Berkeley" has many possible meanings, and the city in California is not the dominant meaning. I can link to the article about the California city by putting the double square brackets around the full name of the article for the city Berkeley, California. But, if I am mentioning many Bay Area cities in my article, all those extra "Californias" will clutter the prose. I can deal with that by using the character "|" in the link. I start with the double square brackets, then type (or cut and paste) the full, accurate name of the article. Now add the "|" character, and then type the name as you want it rendered. In this case, I want just "Berkeley" instead of "Berkeley, California", so that what I type. Close the link with double square brackets. You can see the coding by clicking on the "edit" link for this section. This is the result:

Berkeley

Although the link is rendered as one word: "Berkeley", it takes the reader to the article for "Berkeley, California" rather that the disambiguation page Berkeley.

Creating a list of "References"
A Wikipedia article should have references in order to verify that the information comes from reliable sources. There are several ways to create references, but here, I will explain the easiest way, using mock sources. Let's say I have read a book, and it is called "How to reference Wikipedia articles". For the sake of discussion, the book was written by John Jones, and published in 2010 by ABC Publishers in New York.

First, I have to create a "References" section for the article. It could be called "Footnotes" or something else, but I prefer "References".

I create it as described above, by typing two equal signs, the "References" (without the quotes), and then two more equal signs. Keep this section towards the end of the article. After the title of the section, you need to add some code that instructs the Wikipeda software to create the list of references. There are several variations. For beginners, use the "<" symbol, then the word "references", then the slash symbol "/" then the closing ">" symbol. Click on the "edit" command of the "References" section below to see the code. You can cut and paste the codee into your own articles.

Look for that section at the end of this article.

Formatting an individual reference
As mentioned above, there are many ways to do this, some semi-automated, and some even more automated. Here's the version for beginners: Where you want to add a reference, type the code  without the quotes. Now, add the various parts of your reference, separated by commas. We will start with the author:

Jones, John,

Then the book title, with two single quotes before and after, to make it in italics: