Help:Editing

Editing refers to the changing of a page by a Wikimedia user. Unless certain restrictions are in effect, such as protection, all pages are editable, by everyone. This is a brief overview of that process. The editing table of contents to the right contains more information on editing functions. Remember to always reference your sources. For more info on the type of work being done on this site, see Help:Contents.

Here are the most frequently used types of wiki markup.

Section headings
Use headings to split articles into sections. Put a heading on a separate line. A level-two heading is the highest level editors use in an article.

{| class="wikitable" ! style="width: 50%" | What it looks like ! style="width: 50%" | What you type Section headings

Headings organize your writing into sections. The Wiki software can automatically generate a table of contents from them. Start with 2 'equals' characters.

Subsection Using more 'equals' characters creates a subsection.

A smaller subsection

Don't skip levels, like from two to four 'equals' characters.



Section headings
Headings organize your writing into sections. The Wiki software can automatically generate a table of contents from them. Start with 2 'equals' characters.

Subsection
Using more 'equals' characters creates a subsection.

A smaller subsection
Don't skip levels, like from two to four 'equals' characters. Separating with a horizontal dividing line:
 * Horizontal line
 * Horizontal line
 * this is above it...


 * ...and this is below it.

If you don't use a section header, you don't get a TOC entry. Separating with a horizontal dividing line:
 * Horizontal line
 * this is above it...


 * ...and this is below it.

If you don't use a section header, you don't get a TOC entry.


 * }

Table of contents
When a page has at least four headings, a table of contents (TOC) will appear in front of the first header (after the lead). Putting anywhere forces the TOC to appear at that point (instead of just before the first heading). Putting anywhere forces the TOC to disappear.

Line breaks

 * You can make the wikitext more readable by putting in newlines.
 * To break lines use the  element. The HTML tag   will be converted to the XHTML   tag by HTML Tidy in most instances. The   tag is not converted when used in editnotices or in the MediaWiki namespace— it will render invalid XHTML and will break tools such as Twinkle.
 * Please use these sparingly.
 * Close markup between lines; do not start a link or italics or bold on one line and close it on the next.
 * When used in a list, a newline does affect the layout (See Help:List).

Retaining newlines and spaces
The MediaWiki software suppresses single newlines and converts lines starting with a space to preformatted text in a dashed box. HTML suppresses multiple spaces. It is often desirable to retain these elements for poems, lyrics, mottoes, oaths and the like.

Free links
In Wikipedia and some other Wikis, free links are used in Wikitext markup to produce internal links between pages, as opposed to the concept of CamelCase for the same purpose, which was used in the early days of Wikipedia, see CamelCase and Wikipedia.

In Wikipedia's markup language, you create free links by putting double square brackets around text designating the title of the page you want to link to. Thus,   will be rendered as Texas. Optionally, you can use a vertical bar (|) to customize the link title. For example, typing    will produce Lone Star state, a link that is displayed as " Lone Star state " but in fact links to Texas.

Link to another Wiki article

 * Internally, the first letter of the target page is automatically capitalized and spaces are represented as underscores (typing an underscore in the link has the same effect as typing a space, but is not recommended).
 * Thus the link below is to the URL en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_transport, which is the Wikipedia article with the name "Public transport". See also Canonicalization.
 * A red link is a page that doesn't exist yet; it can be created by clicking on the link.
 * A link to its own page will appear only as bold text.

Renamed link

 * Same target, different name.
 * The target ("piped") text must be placed first, then the text to be displayed second.

Automatically rename links

 * Simply typing the pipe character (|) after a link will automatically rename the link in certain circumstances. The next time you open the edit box you will see the expanded piped link. When previewing your edits, you will not see the expanded form until you press Save and Edit again. The same applies to links to sections within the same page.
 * See Pipe trick for details.

Blend link

 * Endings are blended into the link.
 * Exception: a trailing apostrophe (') and any characters following the apostrophe are not blended.
 * Preferred style is to use this instead of a piped link, if possible.
 * Blending can be suppressed by using   tags, which may be desirable in some instances.

Link to a section of a page

 * The part after the number sign (#) must match a section heading on the page. Matches must be exact in terms of spelling, case, and punctuation. Links to non-existent sections are not broken; they are treated as links to the top of the page.
 * Include "| link title" to create a stylish (piped) link title.
 * If sections have the same title, add a number to link to any but the first.  goes to the third section named "Example section".  You can use the pipe and retype the section title to display the text without the # symbol.

Create page link

 * To create a new page:
 * Create a link to it on some other (related) page.
 * Save that page.
 * Click on the link you just made. The new page will open for editing.
 * For more information, see starting an article and check out Wikipedia's naming conventions.
 * Please do not create a new article without linking to it from at least one other article.

Redirects

 * Redirect one article title to another by placing a directive like the one shown to the right on the first line of the article (such as at a page titled "USA").
 * It is possible to redirect to a section. For example, a redirect to United States will redirect to the History section of the United States page, if it exists.

Link to the same article in another language (interlanguage links)
NOTE: To create an inline link (a clickable link within the text), see Inline interlanguage links.
 * To link to a page on the same subject in another language, use the form: language code:Title.
 * It is recommended interlanguage links be placed at the very end of the article.
 * Interlanguage links are not visible within the formatted article but, instead, appear as language links on the sidebar (to the left) under the menu section "languages".
 * Please see Interlanguage links and the Complete list of language wikis available.

InterWiki link

 * Link to any page on other Wikimedia wikis.
 * Note that interwiki links use the internal link style.
 * See Interwiki_map for the list of shortcuts; if the site you want to link to is not on the list, use an external link (see below)
 * See also Wikimedia sister projects.

Categories

 * To put an article in a category, place a link like the one to the right anywhere in the article. As with interlanguage links, placing these links at the end of the edit box is recommended.
 * To link to a category page without putting the article into the category, use a colon prefix (":Category") in the link.

Media link

 * To include links to non image uploads such as sounds, use a "media" link. For images, see next section.
 * Some uploaded sounds are listed at Sound.

Images
Only images that have been uploaded to Wikipedia can be used. To upload images, use the upload page. You can find the uploaded image on the image list.


 * }

Restrictions
Some pages cannot be edited by everyone. A special function known as protection can be applied to a page by administrators, making the said page uneditable to certain classes of users. There are several degrees of protection: There are various reasons why a page might be protected. Vandalism and spam can lead to semi-protection, while content wars and other severe cases can lead to full protection. There are other times where Office actions come into play. For the most part, protection is temporary and editing privileges are then restored. In any case, everyone can view the source of any page, irrespective of its level of protection.
 * If a page is semiprotected, it can be edited by everyone except IPs and accounts that have not yet been confirmed.
 * If a page is fully protected, only other admins can make edits to the page.
 * A page can also be protected so that it cannot be moved.
 * In some cases, an admin might see fit to protect a page from being created.
 * For very rare pages, such as the Main Page, "cascading" protection is applied, wherein every page that is transcluded onto a page is protected too.