Help:Editing

Editing

Every wiki page has an "edit" tab at the top plus edit links at the side. These links lets you do exactly what they say i.e. edit the page you're looking at. Please try it in the sandbox!

Show preview

This lets you see what the page will look like after your edit, before you actually save. We all make mistakes; this feature lets you catch them immediately. Using Show preview before saving also lets you try format changes and other edits without cluttering up the page history, and has a number of other advantages. Don't forget to save your edits after previewing, though!

Edit summary

Before saving the page, it's considered good practice to enter a very brief summary of your changes in the summary box below the edit-box.

Formatting

Most formatting is usually done with Wiki markup - you don't have to learn HTML!

Bold and italics

Bolding and italicizing is 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)

Headings and subheadings

Headings and subheadings are an easy way to improve the organization of an article.

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.

Indentations

The simplest way of indenting is to place a colon (:) at the beginning of a line. The more colons you put, the further indented the text will be. A newline marks the end of the indented paragraph e.g.

This is aligned all the way to the left.

:This is indented slightly.

::This is indented more.

is shown as

This is aligned all the way to the left.

This is indented slightly.

This is indented more.

Lists

What it looks like	What you type
Unordered lists are easy to do: start every line with a star more stars means deeper levels A newline in a list marks the end of the list.	* Unordered Lists are easy to do: ** start every line with a star *** more stars means deeper levels *A newline *in a list marks the end of the list.
Numbered lists are also good very organized easy to follow A newline in a list marks the end of the list.	# Numbered lists are also good ## very organized ## easy to follow #A newline #in a list marks the end of the list.

Preserving formatting

What it looks like	What you type
Leading spaces are another way to preserve formatting. Putting a space at the beginning of each line stops the text from being reformatted.	Leading spaces are another way to preserve formatting. Putting a space at the beginning of each line stops the text from being reformatted.

Links

Wiki links

To make a wiki link, simply put the word in double square brackets, like this: [[Sandbox]]

If you want to use words other than the article title as the text of the link, you can do so by adding the pipe "|" divider (SHIFT + BACKSLASH on English-layout and other keyboards) followed by the alternative name.

For example, if you wanted to make a link to the sandbox, but wanted it to say "my text" you would write it as: [[sandbox|my text]]... It would appear as: my text... but would link to the sandbox.

External links

The easiest way to make an external link is to simply type in the full URL for the page you want to link to e.g. http://www.google.com.

To make the link display something other than the URL, use one square bracket at each end. If you want to make a link to Google, type [http://www.google.com/] This will display the link as a number in brackets, like this: [1].

If you want the link to appear with text that you specify, add an alternative title after the address separated by a space (not a pipe). So if you want the link to appear as Google search engine, just type [http://www.google.com Google search engine].

Categories

To put a page in a category, just type [[Category:]], and put the name of the category between the colon and the brackets.

External links

• MediaWiki Help:Editing
• MediaWiki Help:Images and other uploaded files
• Help:HTML in wikitext
• HTML to MediaWiki converter
• Firefox Wikipedia extension - The Wikipedia extension makes editing of wiki pages easier by adding a new toolbar to your browser and by providing new menu items in the context menu (right mouse key).