Difference between revisions of "Help:Formatting"

Revision as of 05:47, 23 June 2009

Wiki markup

The wiki markup is the syntax system you can use to format a Wikipedia page; please see Editing for details on it, and Wikitext examples for a longer list of the possibilities of Wikitext.

Headings

For a top-level heading, put it on a separate line surrounded by '=='. For example:

  = Introduction =

Subheadings use '==subheading==', '===subheading level 3===', and so on. ===Character formatting=== {| border="1" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" |- valign="top" ! What it looks like ! What you type |- id="emph" valign="top" | ''Italicized text''<br />'''Bold text'''<br />'''''Italicized & Bold text''''' | <pre><nowiki> ''Italicized text'' '''Bold text''' '''''Italicized & Bold text''''' </pre> |- valign=top | You can use small text for captions. |

You can use <small>small text</small> for captions.

|- valign="top" | Better stay away from big text, unless it's within small text. |

Better stay away from <big>big text</big>, unless
<small> it's <big>within</big> small</small> text.

|- valign="top" | You can strike out deleted material and underline new material.

You can also mark deleted material and inserted material using logical markup. For backwards compatibility better combine this potentially ignored new logical with the old physical markup.

• When editing regular Wikipedia articles, just make your changes and do not mark them up in any special way.
• When editing your own previous remarks in talk pages, it is sometimes appropriate to mark up deleted or inserted material.

|

You can <s>strike out deleted material</s>
and <u>underline new material</u>.

You can also mark <del>deleted material</del> and
<ins>inserted material</ins> using logical markup.
For backwards compatibility better combine this
potentially ignored new <del>logical</del> with
the old <s><del>physical</del></s> markup.

|- valign="top" | Suppressing interpretation of markup:
Link → (''to'') the [[Wikipedia FAQ]]

• Used to show literal data that would otherwise have special meaning.
• Escape all wiki markup, including that which looks like HTML tags.
• Does not escape HTML character references.
• To escape HTML character references such as &rarr; use &amp;rarr;

|

<nowiki>Link &rarr; (''to'') 
the [[Wikipedia FAQ]]</nowiki>

|- valign="top" | Commenting page source:
not shown when viewing page

• Used to leave comments in a page for future editors.
• Note that most comments should go on the appropriate Talk page.

|

<!-- comment here -->

|- valign="top" | Subscripts:
x₁ x₂ x₃ or
x₀ x₁ x₂ x₃ x₄
x₅ x₆ x₇ x₈ x₉

Superscripts:
x¹ x² x³ or
x⁰ x¹ x² x³ x⁴
x⁵ x⁶ x⁷ x⁸ x⁹

• The latter methods of sub/superscripting cannot be used in the most general context, as they rely on Unicode support which may not be present on all users' machines. For the 1-2-3 superscripts, it is nevertheless preferred when possible (as with units of measurement) because most browsers have an easier time formatting lines with it.

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x<sub>1</sub> x<sub>2</sub> x<sub>3</sub> or
x&#8320; x&#8321; x&#8322; x&#8323; x&#8324;
x&#8325; x&#8326; x&#8327; x&#8328; x&#8329;

x<sup>1</sup> x<sup>2</sup> x<sup>3</sup> or
x&#8304; x&sup1; x&sup2; x&sup3; x&#8308;
x&#8309; x&#8310; x&#8311; x&#8312; x&#8313;

|- valign="top" | Mathematical characters:
∑ √ ± ∴ ≈ ≠
≤ ≥ → ← ↔

∑ √ ± ∴ ≈ ≠
≤ ≥ → ← ↔

|}