Wikipedia:Tip of the day/May 1, 2006

Using the prefix in searches

To search for articles in the encyclopedia, simply enter the topic you want to search for in the search box. To see all the pages related to a topic (I'll use the ancient Greeks as an example), type in the text box: Ancient Greece, and click Search. Another way to get a listing of articles on the topic would be to type Category:Ancient Greece. To go to the portal for the Ancient Greeks, you would type: Portal:Ancient Greece. If you knew the name of a photo, but didn't want to go to the page it is on to see it, you could type it in and go straight to it: Image:Caerulea3 crop.jpg, by clicking Go. The namespace prefixes are: Category:, Portal:, Image:, User:, Talk:, Wikipedia:, Help:, and Template:. When using prefixes, you must know or guess the exact name of the page - the search will not list similar pages. This method is most useful for going directly to a page you already know about. We'll cover other ways of searching namespaces in upcoming tips. Read more: Searching

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