Wikipedia:Tutorial (Formatting)

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This article is part
of the Wikipedia Tutorial

Tutorial pages...

Front page
Editing
Formatting
Wikipedia links
Related site links
External links
Talk pages
Keep in mind
Registration
Namespaces
Wrap-up

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.

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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.

It is a Wikipedia convention to bold the subject of an article when it is first mentioned in the article. For example, the article Klinefelter's syndrome starts:

Klinefelter's syndrome is a condition caused by a chromosome nondisjunction in males...

If there are alternatives to the title the same applies, for example Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom starts:

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor), styled HM The Queen (born 21 April 1926) is the Queen regent...

Another Wikipedia convention is to italicize book, movie and computer/video game titles. If the first mention of the subject of an article is also a book or movie title then bold italics is used. For example, the article The Lord of the Rings starts:

The Lord of the Rings is an epic fantasy story by J. R. R. Tolkien, a sequel to his earlier work, The Hobbit.

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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.

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