Wikipedia:Tip of the day/August 3

The lead section

The lead section is an essential summary of an article, located above the first heading.

In the source text (the text in the edit window), a heading looks like this:

The lead section is a very important part of every article. The length should correspond to the overall length of the article: an article of 50,000 characters might well have a three paragraph lead, while one of 15,000 or less should limit itself to one or two paragraphs. The text should give a good overview of the article, but it should also get the reader hooked and interested in learning more. Take a look at some featured articles for inspiration.

It is often a good idea to align a representative image with the lead by placing  just before the first heading. (Filename is the name of the desired file and caption is a description of the image).