User:Kattusite/Advanced features

Once you are done laying out all of the basic sections and content of your Wikipedia article, you are ready to add some more advanced features to your page.

At this point, you will probably want to switch to the Source Editor - while it is possible to implement many of these features using only the Visual Editor, I've found that the Source Editor will offer you a great deal more flexibility with only minimal effort (mostly copy-pasting code snippets from this guide).

Now let's take a look at some of the features that source editing mode can offer you.

Including images
Including images in your article is one of the few advanced features that is probably easiest done using the Visual Editor. The most difficult part of adding an image to your article is finding an appropriate image to use. Remember that anything posted on Wikipedia must be in the public domain, so you can't publish any pictures that might be copyrighted (by anyone, including yourself).



Visual Editor
To insert an image using the Visual Editor, hit Insert, and then Media. You may then search Wikipedia for existing images that may be relevant, or upload your own. Remember that images uploaded to Wikipedia must be in the public domain.

Source Editor
To insert an image using the Source Editor, copy-paste the following:

Replace File:Wikipedia-logo-v2.svg with the name of the uploaded image file you would like to insert.

Typing special characters (IPA)
If you need to type special characters, such as symbols in your language's orthography, or the IPA, you may either use an online tool like TypeIt, or type the characters directly in Wikipedia.

Visual Editor
In the Visual Editor, click on the omega (Ω) on the top toolbar, and a menu will appear allowing you to enter special characters.

Source Editor
In the Source Editor, click on the Special characters option in the top toolbar, and a similar menu will appear to provide you access to these special characters.

Tables
Although the Visual Editor does provide a way to create tables, the tables it produces will be extremely basic, and there is no easy way to add any sort of advanced formatting. Therefore it is probably a good idea to switch to the Source Editor to create a table. In addition, formatting tables can be extremely complicated, especially if you do not have any experience editing HTML or CSS.

Thankfully, one of the greatest aspects of Wikipedia is that it allows you to build off of the work that others have already done -- There is no need to create everything you need from scratch. The best way to create a good-looking table is to find a Wikipedia page that already has a table that looks roughly how you would like, and then modify it as needed to suit your language.

Here are a couple examples taken from the page on Goemai language. Feel free to copy these and modify them for use on your own page.

Consonant chart
To copy the source code for this chart, visit User:Kattusite/Goemai consonant chart.

Vowel chart
To copy the source code for this chart, visit User:Kattusite/Goemai vowel chart.

Syllable chart
To copy the source code for this chart, visit User:Kattusite/Goemai syllable chart.

Templates
Templates are a convenient way to import complicated objects into your page without having to go through the effort of building them from scratch. In addition to making your page look more professional, using templates correctly is a great way to make your page fit in with the style that other articles will be using.

Let's look at some of the most useful templates for pages about languages:

Infoboxes
Infoboxes are the convenient boxes in the upper-right corner of many popular Wikipedia pages. They usually contain a brief summary of the key facts and statistics relating to the article's main topic, and possibly a picture or two to represent it.

If your page doesn't already have one, you can add an infobox by copying the following into the top of your page in the Source Editor. Note that you can delete any options for which you don't have data by removing the entire line. You can also consult the complete Template:Infobox language documentation to see all of the possible options.

TODO: Remove more options until only the bare necessities remain.

TODO: Add a language infobox to this section.

Interlinear Glosses
 ABBR1:meaning1 ABBR2:meaning2  While reading through your grammar, you might have come across a three-line gloss.

Wikipedia provides Template:Interlinear, a convenient template that you can use to represent these three-line glosses in an easily readable format.

renders as:

¿Donde está la biblioteca?

where be.1SG SG.FEM library

"Where is the library?"

You may have noticed that the three-line gloss makes use of abbreviations on the second line. For example, 1SG is used to mean first person singular, and SG.FEM.DEF is used to mean singular feminine definite. If the abbreviations that you use are part of a built-in list, then the abbreviations will be underlined, and you can mouse over them to see what the abbreviation means. You can read more about the the pre-defined abbreviations at Template:Interlinear, or view a list at Module:Interlinear/data. If your grammar uses abbreviations that aren't on this list, fear not! Wikipedia allows you to define your own abbreviations too.

Defining custom abbreviations
In Source Editing mode, simply copy-paste the following code into the top of your article, just after the Infobox:

Replace each ABBR with the abbreviation you would like to use, and each meaning with the definition of that abbreviation. For example, here is a list of definitions from the Goemai language.

Other options
The interlinear template offers way more features than just the basic ones outlined here. If you would like to explore some of these features, such as changing word-spacing, outlining the gloss in a box, or changing the formatting, you may consult the full documentation at Template:Interlinear.

Navboxes
Navboxes are small boxes at the bottom of a Wikipedia page that make it easier for users to navigate to other, related topics. These navboxes typically consist of a large number of well-organized links to articles related to a particular topic. The box at the bottom of this page is a navbox, titled LIN360 Wikipedia Guide. Chances are that a navbox suitable for your page already exists -- you shouldn't need to create one from scratch.

Examples of Navboxes include Template:West Chadic languages and Template:Languages of Nigeria. There are probably already (at least!) two navboxes related to your language: one for its language family, and one for the country in which it's spoken. It may take some searching to find the right ones, but including them will help readers to better navigate your page and related topics.

Once you've found the right template, add that template to your page by enclosing the name of the template within double curly brackets, like  or.

