The markup language called wikitext, also known as wiki markup or wikicode, consists of the syntax and keywords used by the MediaWiki software to format a page. (Note the lowercase spelling of these terms.[a]) To learn how to see this hypertext markup, and to save an edit, see Help:Editing. Generally, coding can be copied and pasted, without writing new code. There is a short list of markup and tips at Help:Cheatsheet.
In addition to wikitext, some HTML elements are also allowed for presentation formatting. See Help:HTML in wikitext for information on this.
Article sections in a page will follow that page's lead or introduction and, if there are four or more, the table of contents.
The = through ====== markup are headings for the sections with which they are associated.
[edit] link. See this section for the relevant CSS.
Templates: {{fake heading}} for use in documentation.
The horizontal rule represents a paragraph-level thematic break. Do not use in article content, as rules are used only after main sections, and this is automatic.
HTML equivalent: <hr /> (which can be indented, whereas ---- always starts at the left margin.)
When a page has at least four headings, a table of contents (TOC) will automatically appear after the lead and before the first heading. The TOC can be controlled by magic words or templates:
__FORCETOC__ forces the TOC to appear at the normal location regardless of the number of headings.__TOC__ forces the TOC to appear at the point where the magic word is inserted instead of the normal location.__NOTOC__ disables the TOC entirely.Line breaks or newlines are used to add whitespace between lines, such as separating paragraphs.
HTML equivalent: <br> or <br /> can be used to break line layout.
Templates for line breaks:
Unbulleted list:
Indentation is most commonly used on talk pages.
Templates: {{outdent}}, {{outdent2}}
When there is a need for separating a block of text. This is useful for (as the name says) inserting blocks of quoted (and cited) text.
This uses an HTML tag; template {{quote}} results in the same render.
Template {{center}} uses the same markup. To center a table, see Help:Table#Centering tables.
Please do not use <center>...</center> tags, as it is obsolete.
You can align content in a separate container:
Or; make the text float around it:
Do not leave blank lines between items in a list unless there is a reason to do so, since this causes the MediaWiki software to interpret each item as beginning a new list.
To list terms and definitions, start a new line with a semicolon (;) followed by the term. Then, type a colon (:) followed by a definition. The format can also be used for other purposes, such as make and models of vehicles, etc.
Description lists (formerly definition lists, and a.k.a. association lists) consist of group names corresponding to values. Group names (terms) are in bold. Values (definitions) are indented. Each group must include one or more definitions. For a single or first value, the : can be placed on the same line after ; – but subsequent values must be placed on separate lines.
HTML equivalent: <dl> <dt>...</dt>, <dd>...</dd> </dl>
Templates: {{defn}}
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. The Poem extension adds HTML-like <poem>...</poem> tags to maintain newlines and spaces. These tags may be used inside other tags such as <blockquote>...</blockquote>; the template {{poemquote}} provides a convenient shorthand. CSS styles may be applied to this tag, e.g.: <poem style="margin-left: 2em;">.
Poems and their translation can be presented side by side, and the language can be indicated with lang="xx". Following the last side-by-side block, {{Clear|left}} must be used to cancel "float:left;" and to re-establish normal flow. Note that this method does not require a table and its columns to achieve the side-by-side presentation.
Markup
<poem lang="fr" style="float:left;">Frère Jacques, frère Jacques,Dormez-vous? Dormez-vous?Sonnez les matines! Sonnez les matines!Ding, dang, dong. Ding, dang, dong.</poem><poem style="margin-left:2em; float:left;">Are you sleeping? Are you sleeping?Brother John, Brother John,Morning bells are ringing! Morning bells are ringing!Ding, dang, dong. Ding, dang, dong.</poem>{{Clear|left}}Renders as
Frère Jacques, frère Jacques,
Dormez-vous? Dormez-vous?
Sonnez les matines! Sonnez les matines!
Ding, dang, dong. Ding, dang, dong.
Are you sleeping? Are you sleeping?
Brother John, Brother John,
Morning bells are ringing! Morning bells are ringing!
Ding, dang, dong. Ding, dang, dong.
Special characters can often be displayed using numeric character references or character entity references. See Character encodings in HTML for more information. For example, À and À both render À (A-grave). Percent-encoding can't be used, as it works only in URLs.
Diacritic marks, using character entity references.
Using character entity references.
The <pre>, <nowiki>, and <code> markup tags are also available, for writing "[", "{", "&", "}", "]" for example. These tags prevent these characters from being recognised as wiki markup, which is a possibility in some circumstances.
Using character entity references.
Using character entity references.
WikiHiero is a software extension that renders Egyptian hieroglyphs as PNG images using <hiero> HTML-like tags.
Example:
<sub> and <sup> formats, for example x<sub>1</sub>. So this should be used under most circumstances.Invisible and PUA (Private Use Areas) characters should be avoided where possible. When needed, they should both be replaced with their (hexa)decimal code values (as "&#(x)...;"). This renders invisible characters visible, for manual editing, and allows AWB to process pages with PUA characters. The latter should also be tagged with the {{PUA}} template for tracking and future maintenance.
× should not use the plain letter x. See math font formatting. For a comprehensive set of symbols, and comparison between <math> tags and the {{math}} template see section TeX vs HTML.<math> tag typesets using LaTeX markup,[b] which may render as an image or as HTML, depending on environmental settings. The <math> tag is best for the complex formula on its own line in an image format. If you use this tag to put a formula in the line with text, put it in the {{nowrap}} template.= sign, so remember to replace = with {{=}} in template input, or start the input with 1=. Use wiki markup '' and ''' inside the {{math}} template, as well as other HTML entities. The {{math}} template is best for typeset formulas in line with the text. to prevent line break is not needed; the {{math}} template will prevent line breaks anyway; you can use <br /> if you need an explicit line break inside a formula.<math>.<math display=block>...</math>Indenting by using the colon (:) character (i.e. using :<math></math> instead of <math display=block></math>) is discouraged for accessibility reasons.
Wikilinks are used in wikitext markup to produce internal links between pages. You create wikilinks by putting double square brackets around text designating the title of the page you want to link to. Thus, [[Texas]] will be rendered as Texas. Optionally, you can use a vertical bar (|) to customize the link title. For example, typing [[Texas|Lone Star State]] will produce Lone Star State, a link that is displayed as "Lone Star State" but in fact links to Texas.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Wikitext/Public_transport, which is the Wikipedia article with the name "Public transport". See also Canonicalization.[[language code:Foreign title]].[[Category:Example]] into the article. As with interlanguage links, placing these links at the end of the article is recommended.https:// (preferably) and http:// will be supported by all browsers; irc://, ircs://, ftp://, news://, mailto:, and gopher:// will require a plugin or an external application. IPv6 addresses in URLs are currently not supported.%20. Encoding can be achieved by:
on the enhanced editing toolbar to encode the link; this tool will add the bracket markup and the linked text, which may not always be desirable.{{urlencode:}} magic word. See Help:Magic words in the MediaWiki documentation for more details.Musical notation is added by using the <score>...</score> extension HTML-like tag. For example:
Only images that have been uploaded to Wikipedia or Wikimedia Commons can be used. To upload images, use the Commons upload wizard for photos you have taken, and the Wikipedia upload page if there may be copyright issues. You can find the uploaded image on the image list.
See the Wikipedia's image use policy for the policy used on Wikipedia.
For further help on images, including some more versatile abilities, see the picture tutorial and extended image syntax.
There are two ways to build tables:
<table>, <tr>, <td> or <th>.Use {{colbegin}} and {{colend}} templates to produce columns.
Making a reference citing a printed or online source can be accomplished by using the <ref> wiki markup tags. Inside these tags details about the reference are added.
Details about the citation can be provided using a structure provided by various templates; the table below lists some typical citation components.
Examples for templates: {{pad|...}}, {{math|...}}, {{as of|...}}, {{edit}}
Templates are segments of wiki markup that are meant to be copied automatically ("transcluded") into a page. They are specified by putting the template's name in {{double braces}}. Most templates are pages in the Template namespace, but it is possible to transclude mainspace pages (articles) by using {{:colon and double braces}}.
There are three pairs of tags that can be used in wikitext to control how transclusion affects parts of a template or article. They determine whether or not wikitext renders, either in its own article, which we will call "here", or in another article where it is transcluded, which we will call "there".
There can be several such section "elements". Also, they can be nested. All possible renderings are achievable. For example, to render there one or more sections of the page here use <onlyinclude> tags. To append text there, wrap the addition in <includeonly> tags before, within, or after the section. To omit portions of the section, nest <noinclude> tags within it.
If a page is transcluded without transclusion markup, it may cause an unintentional categorization. Any page transcluding it will contain the same category as the original page. Wrap the category markup with <noinclude> tags to prevent incorrect categorization.Some templates take parameters, as well, which you separate with the pipe character |.
These are likely to be helpful on talk and project pages.
The {{xt}} family of templates can be used to highlight example text. These templates do not work in mainspace—that is, in regular articles—they are intended for use on project pages (such as Wikipedia:Manual of Style), help pages, and user pages.
<del>...</del><ins>...</ins>The {{Strikethrough}} template marks up a span of text with the <s>...</s> tag. This is usually renderend visually by drawing a horizontal line through it. Outside of articles, it can be used to mark something as no longer accurate or relevant without removing it from view. Do not use it, however, to indicate document edits. For that, use the <del>...</del> tag instead. See § Show deleted or inserted text for details.
A few different kinds of formatting will tell the wiki to display things as you typed them – what you see is what you get!
<nowiki>...</nowiki> (wiki markup contained between these two tags is displayed as normal text)<nowiki /> (wiki markup that is interrupted by this tag is displayed as normal text, as detailed in examples below)These two kinds of nowiki operate in different ways, but both neutralize the rendering of wiki markup as shown in the examples below. For example, the characters that have wiki markup meaning at the beginning of a line (*, #, ; and :) can be rendered in normal text. Editors can normalize the font of characters trailing a wikilink, which would otherwise appear in the wikilink font. And newlines added to wikitext for readability can be ignored.
Note to template editors: tag <nowiki> works only on its source page, not the target.
The rest of the section consists of simple, live examples showing how a single nowiki tag escapes entire linkage structures, beyond [[wikilink]] and {{template}}:
Unless you use the two "balanced" nowiki tags, troubleshooting strip marker errors and template parameter-handling inconsistencies is a risk. Also, a rendering error may arise when two [[...]] square brackets are on the same line, or two {{...}} curly brackets are in the same section, but only when the two have the nowiki markup placed inconsistently.
(These are all live examples.)
For nested structures, escaping an inner structure escapes its outer structure too.
For two, first pipes, two nowiki tags are required:
For templates, put nowiki before the first pipe. If a parameter has a wikilink, put it in that, an inmost position.
For input parameters, {{{1}}}, {{{2}}}, just write them out, unless they have a default (which goes behind their pipe): {{<nowiki />{1|default}}} → {{{1|default}}}
For a parser function nowiki goes between bracketing-pair characters, or anywhere before the : colon.
Behavioral switches expect the tag anywhere:
Tags do not display; they are just markup. If you want them to, insert <nowiki /> after an < opening angle bracket; it goes only in the very front. Opening tags and closing tags must be treated separately.
Use template {{tag}} instead of nowiki tags to display parser tags:
Character entities, nowiki cannot escape.
To escape HTML or special character entities, replace & with &.
For example, &lt; → <
To display a nowiki tag, you can (1) use {{tag}}, (2) replace the < left angle bracket with its HTML character entity, or (3) nest nowiki tags in each other:
Nowiki tags do not otherwise nest, so it is the second and fourth that displays:
These simply scan from left to right. The paired tags cannot overlap, because the very first pair-match nullifies any intervening tags inside. Unbalanced tags always display.
Nowiki tags do not display table markup, use <pre>...</pre>.
<pre> is a parser tag that emulates the HTML <pre> tag. It defines preformatted text that is displayed in a fixed-width font and is enclosed in a dashed box. HTML-like and wiki markup tags are escaped, spaces and line breaks are preserved, but HTML elements are parsed.
As <pre> is a parser tag, it escapes wikitext and HTML tags. This can be prevented with the use of <includeonly></includeonly> within the <pre>, making it act more like its HTML equivalent:
Invisible HTML <pre> tags can also be inserted by preceding text with a space character, like:
wiki markup &
Alternatively, consider using {{pre}} template or <syntaxhighlight lang="text">...</syntaxhighlight>.
It's uncommon – but on occasion acceptable for notes to other editors – to add a hidden comment within the text of an article. These comments are visible only when editing or viewing the source of a page. Most comments should go on the appropriate Talk page. The format is to surround the hidden text with "<!--" and "-->" and may cover several lines, e.g.:
<!-- An example of hidden comments This won't be visible except in "edit" mode. -->
Another way to include a comment in the wiki markup uses the {{Void}} template, which can be abbreviated as {{^}}. This template "expands" to the empty string, generating no HTML output; it is visible only to people editing the wiki source. Thus {{^|A lengthy comment here}} operates similarly to the comment <!-- A lengthy comment here -->. The main difference is that the template version can be nested, while attempting to nest HTML comments produces odd results.
{{NUMBEROFARTICLES}} is the number of pages in the main namespace that contain a link and are not a redirect. This includes full articles, stubs containing a link, and disambiguation pages.
{{CURRENTMONTHNAMEGEN}} is the genitive (possessive) grammatical form of the month name, as used in some languages but not in English; {{CURRENTMONTHNAME}} is the nominative (subject) form, as usually seen in English.
In languages where it makes a difference, you can use constructs like {{grammar:case|word}} to convert a word from the nominative case to some other case. For example, {{grammar:genitive|{{CURRENTMONTHNAME}}}} means the same as {{CURRENTMONTHNAMEGEN}}.
Many HTML tags can be used in wiki markup. You can check your HTML by using markup validation.
See the 'Coding wiki markup' section of the Help navigation navbox below for additional links.
Editing Wikitext at Wikibooks.