Help:Tutorial (Formatting)
From The Black Vault Encyclopedia Project
Frontpage, 1: Editing, 2: Formatting, 3: Wikipedia links, 4: Related site links, 5: External links, 6: Talk pages, 7: Keep in mind, 8: Registration, 9: Namespaces, 10: Wrap-up
| This article is part of the Tutorial |
| Tutorial pages... |
|
Front page |
| See also... |
Most formatting is usually done with Wiki markup, so people don't have to learn HTML.
Contents |
Wiki markup
Writing for Wikipedia articles is a bit different from writing on a standard word processor. Instead of a strict "what you see is what you get" approach (also known as WYSIWYG), wiki uses simple text codes for formatting. The approach is similar to that used in writing HTML for web pages, but the codes are simpler.
The wiki can accept some HTML tags directly, but most people use the built-in MediaWiki markup language, which is designed for ease of editing.
Bold and italics
The most commonly used wiki tags are bold and italics. Bolding and italicizing are done by surrounding a word or phrase with multiple apostrophes ('):
- ''italics'' appears as italics. (2 apostrophes on both sides)
- '''bold''' appears as bold. (3 apostrophes on both sides)
- '''''bolded italics''''' appears as bolded italics. (5 apostrophes on both sides)
Note: You can type multiple quote characters by surrounding them in <pre> or <nowiki> tags.
Headings and subheadings
Headings and subheadings are an easy way to improve the organization of an article. If you can see two or more distinct topics being discussed, you can break up the article by inserting a heading for each section.
Headings can be created like this:
- ==Top level heading== (2 equals signs)
- ===Subheading=== (3 equals signs)
- ====Another level down==== (4 equals signs)
If an article has at least four headings, a table of contents will automatically be generated. Try creating a heading in this page's /sandbox/. It will be added automatically to the table of contents for the page, assuming three others already exist.
Indenting
Indentation on Wikipedia is used primarily on talk pages, so see Chapter 6 of this tutorial for instructions on indenting text.
Play around in the /sandbox/ if you'd like, and then Continue with the tutorial.
Frontpage, 1: Editing, 2: Formatting, 3: Wikipedia links, 4: Related site links, 5: External links, 6: Talk pages, 7: Keep in mind, 8: Registration, 9: Namespaces, 10: Wrap-up
