User:Kattusite/Editing pages

If you look at the toolbar at the top of any Wikipedia article, you will see that there are several options. Of course, you can Read the page, like you are doing right now, but you also have the option to Edit the page or View history for that page, to see what edits others have made in the past.

Let's take a closer look at these two features:

View History
Before you start editing, note that Wikipedia stores the complete edit history for every page on the site. Every change that you make, or that any editor before you has made, will be publicly logged. You can view this history for any page by clicking on the View History button on the right side of the toolbar at the top of the page, next to the Edit button. You can take a look at the edit history for this page to get a feel for how it works.

It might seem intimidating that any changes you make will be stored forever, but this actually takes a lot of the pressure off of you as an editor! The fact that the full history of the page is available means that you can never screw up too badly - even if you accidentally delete the entire page, your edits can always be reverted with the click of a button. Of course, in practice it's best not to rely on this too heavily, so we will be drafting major page alterations in a sandbox before publishing them.

The moral of the story: Don't be afraid to take risks and try new things! You will always have a second chance to make things right.

Choosing an editor
Now that you've read a bit about page history, you're ready to start editing!

Just about every page on Wikipedia is available for you to edit (even this one!) by clicking the Edit button in the upper-right corner of the page. When you do this, you will be presented with one of two article editors (either the Visual Editor or the Source Editor), which will allow you to make changes and publish your edits to the page.

When you are just getting started, I recommend trying the Visual Editor first to sketch out the overall layout and content of your page, and switch to the Source Editor only when you need to make use of more advanced features, like tables, infoboxes, special citation styles, or templates. If you have some background in programming or you are looking for a more expressive (albeit more challenging) interface, you may want to use the Source Editor from the start.

Note that whichever editor you choose, you will be able to switch back and forth at any time while editing an article by clicking the small pencil icon in the upper-right corner of the currently active editor.

Visual Editor
The Visual Editor is the default editor you will see when you open a page for editing for the first time. It offers you all of the standard features you would expect to find in any text editor, like Google Docs or Microsoft Word. While it is lacking in some of the more advanced features, it will very easily allow you to insert headings, apply formatting, and type out large paragraphs of text at a time.

Source Editor
The source editor is a powerful tool that allows you to edit the source code of the page directly, as Wikitext. This mode lets you use special punctuation and syntax to accomplish very powerful effects in your Wikipedia page and add advanced features that would otherwise be impossible using only the Visual editor. Because you are editing the source code of the page, small changes may break things in unexpected ways if you make a mistake - but don't panic! Remember, it's easy to revert an edit if you get stuck.

If you have experience with markup languages like LaTeX, Markdown, or HTML, some of the features of Wikitext will likely be familiar to you. If not, don't worry! This guide will explain everything you need to know.

If you are more comfortable editing the source code directly, or if you're just curious about the special syntax available to you in this mode, check out Help:Wikitext to get a fully-detailed explanation.

Page features
Regardless of which editor you've chosen, there are certain key elements you will likely need to include in your Wikipedia article.

Headings
Most articles will use section headings as a way to organize content and group key topics together in a single place. Headings will also appear in your page's table of contents (if it has one), so that readers can navigate to a specific section of the page with a single click.

Visual Editor
To create headings in the visual editor:

Source Editor
To create headings in the source editor

Links
Adding links to your article is an excellent way to make it easier for readers to get more information about a particular topic, and cut down on the amount of exposition you will need to include. If you find yourself explaining a complicated topic that a) isn't the main focus of your page, and b) already has its own article, you should probably just include a link to that article, rather than writing out a full explanation.

You can both add links to other Wikipedia pages and to external websites if desired. If possible, you should try to include links in your article to related Wikipedia pages. Generally, all of the links in the main body of the article should be to other Wikipedia articles. For example, if you are writing an article about phonetics, you might want to include links to pages on vowels and consonants.

You should also feel free to add links to external websites if you think they will improve the article, but it is generally poor style to link to these inline from within the article body. Instead, consider placing them in a section titled External Links or Additional Reading, or including the links as part of a citation if you are using information from that source.

Visual Editor
To add links to external websites:

To add links to other Wikipedia articles:

Source Editor
To add links to external websites:

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To add links to other Wikipedia articles:

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