Wikipedia:Tutorial (Formatting)
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Wikipedia:Tutorial (Formatting)/Header
Formatting 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, Wikipedia uses text codes to create particular elements of the page (e.g. headings). This "language" is known as Wikitext (or Wiki-markup) and 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'' 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)
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.
Formatting conventions
It is a Wikipedia convention to mark in bold the names of an article's subject when they are first mentioned in the article. For example, the article Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom begins:
- Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor), styled HM The Queen (born 21 April 1926) is the Queen regnant…
Another Wikipedia convention is to italicize book, movie, album, 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.
It is usually preferred that the names of papers (e.g. a scientific article), chapters (e.g. in a book), songs, or television episodes are mentioned "in quotes" rather than being italicised. If the first mention of the subject of an article is also one of these things, then it is "emboldened and quoted". For example, the article Out of Mind begins:
- "Out of Mind" (Part 1 of 2) is the Season 2 finale episode of the science fiction television series Stargate SG-1. It is followed by the episode "Into the Fire".