Wikipǣdia:Tutorial (Formatting)

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

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Impressive Stuff

Wiki markup

Formatting text in an entry is somewhat different compared to what you would normally do in a typical word processor.

The wiki can accept some html tags, but most people use the built-in wiki 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 is done by surrounding a word or phrase with multiple apostrophes ('):

• ''italics'' is rendered as italics. (2 apostrophes on either side)
• '''bold''' is rendered as bold. (3 apostrophes on either side)
• '''''bolded italics''''' is rendered as bolded italics. (2 + 3 = 5 apostrophes on either side)

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 chromosomal abnormality in males...

Another Wikipedia convention is to italicize book and movie titles. If the first mention of a 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.

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 your 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 three headings, a table of contents will be automatically generated. Try creating a heading in this page's sandbox. It will be automatically added to the table of contents for the page. When you're done, click below to continue.

Continue with the tutorial.

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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