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Basic Wiki Formatting

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[edit] Introduction to Wiki Formatting

Simple editing is one of the major benefits of using a wiki. Users can edit pages without knowing HTML, and still use many formatting features of HTML. Most wikis define a set of formatting rules to convert plain text into HTML. Some wikis (like this one) also allow some HTML "tags", like <b>, <i>, and <pre> within a page. (Some wikis use raw HTML instead of special formatting rules.)

The following text is an overview of the MediaWiki text formatting rules. For examples without all the explanatory text, see the TextFormattingExamples. To try these rules for yourself, please feel free to edit the Sandbox page. To see how any page is formatted, just follow the link "Edit" at the top of the page.

[edit] Basic Text Formatting

Most text does not require any special changes for wiki form. A few basic rules are:

  • Do not indent paragraphs. (Indenting may cause your text to appear in a monospaced font.)
  • Leave a single blank line between paragraphs.
  • To create a horizontal line, type 4 minus/dash/hyphen (-) characters.
  • There is no need to encode HTML characters like <, >, or &.
  • HTML characters like © and ∞ can be used on pages: do "&copy;" and "&infin;" (version 0.91 and later). See http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/sgml/entities.html.

[edit] Bold, Italic and Fixed-width Text

To mark text as bold, italic or fixed-width, you can use the HTML <b>, <i> and code tags. For example: 

<b> bold </b>, 
<i> italic </i>,
<b> <i> bold+italic </i> </b>.

Note that MediaWiki (like most Wikis) processes pages line-by-line, so if you want three bold lines of text, you will need to use three separate <b>...</b> tags. Also note that unclosed or unmatched tags are not removed from the page.

MediaWiki also implements the old "quote style" of text formatting, which is used on several wikis. Briefly: 

''Two single quotes are italics'',
'''three single quotes are bold''',
'''''five single quotes are bold and italic.'''''

looks like:

Two single quotes are italics, three single quotes are bold, five single quotes are bold and italic.

The "quote style" formatting is often confusing, especially when multiple bold and italic sections are mixed on a line. It is also incompatible with Lyrics pages, where <b> and <i> must be used.

[edit] Headings

Headings are delimited by 1-6 equal signs (=). They basically correspond to HTML's <h1> through <h6> tags. 

= Headline size 1 =
== Headline size 2 ==
=== Headline size 3 ===
==== Headline size 4 ====
===== Headline size 5 =====
====== Headline size 6 ======

[edit] Lists

Simple lists: 

* Text for a bulleted list item.
** Text for second-level list.
*** Text for third level, etc.

...which looks like:

  • Text for a bulleted list item.
    • Text for second-level list.
      • Text for third level, etc.

Numbered lists: 

# Text for a numbered list item.
## Text for second-level list.
### Text for third level, etc.
## Another Text for the second level.

...which looks like:

  1. Text for a numbered list item.
    1. Text for second-level list.
      1. Text for third level, etc.
    2. Another Text for the second level.

[edit] Indented Text

Simple indented text: 

: Text to be indented (quote-block)
:: Text indented more
::: Text indented to third level

...which looks like:

Text to be indented (quote-block)
Text indented more
Text indented to third level

Term with indented definition: [without a blank line between term and definition] 

;Term:Definition (indented)
:;Term (indented):Definition (indented two levels)
::;Term (indented twice):Definition (indented to third level)

...which looks like:

Term
Definition (indented)
Term (indented)
Definition (indented two levels)
Term (indented twice)
Definition (indented to third level)

[edit] Preformatted Text

Individual lines can be displayed as preformatted (fixed-width or "typewriter"-font) text by placing one or more spaces at the start of the line. Other wiki formatting (like links) will be applied to this kind of preformatted text.

Additionally, multi-line sections can be marked as pre-formatted text using lines starting with <pre> (to start pre-formatted text), and </pre> (to end preformatted text). The <pre> and </pre> tags are not displayed. Wiki links and other formatting is not done within a preformatted section. (If you want wiki formatting, use spaces at the start of the line instead of the <pre> and </pre> tags.)

For instance: 

Pre-formatted section here. No other
link or format processing
is done on pre-formatted sections.
For instance, [[UseModWiki]] is not a link here.

and: 

This is the starting-spaces version of
preformatted text. Note that links like
UseModWiki still work.

[edit] Embedding Tables

Rather than going through the lengthy and complicated way to add a table, you can easily do it using wiki code. To start a table, add this text: 

{|

Next, to start a row, use a pipe and a dash, such as this: 

|-

For each cell, add a pipe. (Note, start a new line for each cell): 

|Cell1
|Cell2
|Cell3

Then, just make sure to close your table with the pipe and squiggly line: 

|}

On TMBW's Azure skin, the "ebena" class can be applied to tables for a stylish and clean look as seen on Shows. Just add class="ebena" to the top of a table, like this: 

{|class="ebena"

And there you have it!

For more detailed tables, please visit wikimedia.org, or use this HTML to Wiki table converter.

[edit] Miscellaneous Rules

  • To quote text without applying the wiki formatting rules, enclose it within a <nowiki> ... </nowiki> section. Within a nowiki section, only HTML-quoting of special characters (<>&) will occur--no other formatting rules will be applied.
  • A line which ends in a backslash character (\) will be joined with the next line before most formatting rules are applied. This can be useful for breaking up long sections of text in line-sensitive sections (like lists or indented text).
  • Most of the formatting rules are order-independent. On rare occasions the order of processing may be important. The rules are processed in the following order: HTML quoting, nowiki tags, backslash line joining, preformatted sections, paragraphs, lists and indented text, horizontal lines, italic/bold text, URLs, and finally ordinary WikiName links.
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