Help:Wikitext

Wikitext uses many words and symbols to format, edit and facilitate reading articles, a few of the more common are explained here. There are links to more explanatory pages where they exist.

Category
Used with every article to put in a category (or categories).

Usage:. These are usually placed at the end of an article, but even if they aren't, they will always appear at the bottom to a reader. See Help:New Article for more information.

Formatting with apostrophes
Emphasise with italic or/and bold lettering.

Usage:


 * Italic:  = This text is italic.
 * Bold:  = This text is bold.
 * Italic and bold:  = This text is italic and bold

Combining: Although not recommended (as it may be confusing), you can also combine them:  = This text is all italic, but some of it is bold.

Headings
Divides an article into sections using headers. Besides making an article easier to read, headers also make it easier to edit, since each one becomes an editable section (and thus prevents editing conflicts).

Usage: Two or more equal signs signs before and after words makes them into headers and divides the page into sections. "Two equals sign" headers are used for main sections. "Three equals sign" headers are used to further break them up (in subsections).

Indenting
Indenting, like "tabbing" in a word processor, but affecting the whole paragraph that it precedes, is to create space before an element, like text (also known as padding).

Usage:
 * Colon : Indents once for each colon; used in RationalWiki talk pages, where it is customary for successive entries (comments) to be indented one more than the previous using colons. When things get too far to the edge; use od (outdent).
 * Asterisk : Used as a talk page indent symbol on some wikis. Do not use it as such on RationalWiki.  Asterisks are for making bulleted lists.
 * Pound, hash, or number : Used to create numbered lists. Using multiple pounds  after a single one creates subsections.
 * Semicolon : Used for definition/reference lists.

The various indent methods can be combined; experiment here!

Example of definition list:

;Marmalade : a delicious conserve of (normally) oranges.
 * Orange : the fruit of the orange tree produces:


 * Marmalade : a delicious conserve of (normally) oranges.
 * Orange : the fruit of the orange tree.

Quotes
To differentiate actual quotations from the body of the article.

Usage: Quotation goes here. produces:

Quotation goes here.

Redirect
Forces an incoming link or transclusion to be redirected to another page. Used when there is more than one way of referring to a subject. Alternately spelled or titled articles contain only the Redirect to the primary page.

Usage:

Luckily, it is on your default toolbar when you are editing a page, in  (as  ).

Return
Needed to stop many of the effects here, two returns put a clear line in the text flow.

Signing
Tildes are used in wikitext for signing and/or dating   contributions.

Usage:
 * Four tildes : automatically stamps your username, date and time at the point of insertion. This should always be done after talk page comments.
 * Three tildes : automatically stamps only your username.
 * Five tildes : automatically stamps only the date and time.

Your username is automatically formatted as a link to your user and talk pages.

Sorting
changes the order in which the title is sorted in  listings. This is mostly used with people's names.

Usage:  — has no visible effect within the article but forces the sort order in category lists.

Example:  will force an article on Richard Dawkins to appear under page names starting with.

Sorting can also be achieved within individual categories using. For example, in the hypothetical category  use. Within that category, the article will be listed under the alpha order of the sortkey wording, although the article will still be referred to by its title.

Templates
"Transclude" is wikitext for " trans fer/in clude "; it means the copying (transfering) of the contents of another page and adding (including) it in the target page.

Usage:  — The page being copied is usually known as a   and is likely to be in the   namespace. There are many other magic words and symbols used in wikitext, feel free to research and experiment with them!

Formatting with HTML
Hyper text markup language (HTML) can be used to alter the appearance of text, but is not 100% reliable as it might conflict with the syntax (expression) of wikitext.

Usage: These tags are in the  section of the editing toolbox. Commonly used are: Dump Trump!
 * : Makes the text appear smaller and below the normal line-height. Can be used, for example, in indexes in chemical formulas (e.g. H2O) or mathematical expressions (e.g. fx(x,y) = xy dx).
 * : Makes the text appear smaller and above the normal line-height. Can be used, for example, in exponents for isotopes (e.g. 14C) or mathematical expressions (e.g. f -1(x) = x2).
 * : Strikes out text without removing them, ,any times used as a form of sarcasm, e.g. "G.W. Bush is a less worse better president than D.J. Trump."
 * : Underlines text, many times used for emphasis, e.g. "Please do not feed the trolls."
 * : Changes the color of the font. Example:   produces Red words . See Help:Color for more information.
 * : Inserts a hard line break (cr/lf) in the text.
 * : Centers the enclosed text across the page. Example:  produces:

Most HTML will probably work, but the Mediawiki software doesn't like some tags, especially if you mix them. Preferably, use the CSS defined  tags to color text e.g.   to produce: RED ALARM.

Gap
There shall not be too much of a gap between paragraphs or headings.

Example
As you can see there is unnerving gap above. This big gap is caused by:

Example
Two line breaks. One line break is enough.

In wikitext examples
Whitespace should be used to enhance the readability of wikitext examples.

In the wikitext of our actual article, use whatever you like. and

There are cases where bad whitespace should be used in examples; cases where the accurate transcribing of the result is priority.

Non breaking space
Can be induced by Nowrap however the simple HTML entity  is sufficient for most cases.

With non breaking space: Chicken Pig Monkey Hen Banana Goat Monster Cake Dragon Cheese Evil No Death Love Hate Fear Cute Dog Honey Without non breaking space: Chicken Pig Monkey Hen Banana Goat Monster Cake Dragon Cheese Evil No Death Love Hate Fear Cute Dog Honey

Zero-width space
HTML entity:

Example stolen from Wikipedia. In the first example, zero width spaces are placed between each word.

With zero-width space: Lorem&#8203;Ipsum&#8203;Dolor&#8203;Sit&#8203;Amet&#8203;Consectetur&#8203;Adipiscing&#8203;Elit&#8203;Sed&#8203;Do&#8203;Eiusmod&#8203;Tempor&#8203;Incididunt&#8203;Ut&#8203;Labore&#8203;Et&#8203;Dolore&#8203;

Without zero-width space: LoremIpsumDolorSitAmetConsecteturAdipiscingElitSedDoEiusmodTemporIncididuntUtLaboreEtDolore

Comment Tags
Character put in comments are only visible when viewed on edit mode.

Edit mode:

Read mode: