User:Lquilter/Quick and dirty guide to editing Wikipedia

Wikipedia editing can be super-simple. Here's my quick-and-dirty guide to editing Wikipedia:

First remember (a) you can always hit the SHOW PREVIEW button instead of the SAVE PAGE button, to see what it would look like first; and (b) don't worry about messing up formatting -- someone else will probably come along and clean it up! (Wikipedians love to do that.)


 * Basic formatting
 * BOLD by using three single-quotes together. Example:
 * I want  this text  to be bold.
 * It looks like: I want this text to be bold.


 * ITALICIZE by using two single-quotes together. Example:
 * I want  this text  to be italicized.
 * It looks like: I want this text to be italicized.


 * Make a bulleted list by using an asterisk for each bullet. Example:
 * * red
 * * blue
 * * green


 * To start a new paragraph just hit return a couple of times and start on a new line!


 * To indent text, just put a colon at the beginning of the line. Or more than one!  Each colon is about a tab's worth of indent.  Example:
 * ::: The Way We Were  which looks like this:
 * The Way We Were


 * LINKING
 * URLS are automatically linked like this  http://nyt.com/ 


 * If you want to show text and not a URL, use single square brackets, like this:
 *  New York Times 
 * That will display like this: New York Times


 * To make a link to a wikipedia article, use double square brackets around the article title, like this:
 * The renowned educator,  Paulo Freire  , was born in 1921.


 * HEADINGS
 * To make a heading, just use two equal signs at the beginning the line, then the heading text, then two equal signs again -- like this:
 * == Early life ==


 * If you want to make a subheading of that heading, use three equal signs instead of two; a subheading of that uses four equal signs instead of three!


 * REFERENCING

Wikipedia has lots of tools to help you with citations and references. Once you're comfortable with Wikipedia, start playing around with them. In the meantime, just reference it old-school in whatever citation format you like. Some other Wikipedia editor will clean it up!

For example: '''Paulo Freire was born in Brazil. (Gadotti, p.25)''' and then at the bottom of the page, just create a references list, like this:
 * References
 * Moacir Gadotti, Reading Paulo Freire: His Life and Work (SUNY Press 1994)


 * WIKIPEDIA MISCELLANEA
 * When you talk to someone on a "talk page", you can "sign" your note very easily just by using four tildes in a row, like this:
 * "Hey Jane, I really loved the article you wrote!  ~ '
 * Which produces something that looks like this:
 * "Hey Jane, I really loved the article you wrote! Lquilter (talk) 14:50, 25 October 2012 (UTC)


 * Try using the SHOW PREVIEW button and your sandbox to play around.


 * Use "edit summaries" to describe your changes -- it helps other Wikipedia editors help you!