Wikipedia:Tip of the day/August 3, 2006

The lead section

The lead section is the text before the first heading.

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

==This is a heading==

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 itself 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's often a good idea to align a representative image with the lead by placing  just before the section. (Where Filename is the name of the desired file).

Read more: Guide to writing better articles

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