Wiki syntax

You might want to learn simply how to start a page. If you want the details about how to edit a Wikipedia page, though, you've come to the right place.

It's very easy to edit a Wiki page. Simply click on the "edit this page right now!" link at the top or bottom of a Wiki page. This will bring you to a page with a text box containing the text of that Wiki page. Then type away, and press "Save" when finished! (You can also preview your changes before saving if you like.)

What you see in the text box will be mostly plain text, but you will see some special things the Wiki software uses to create links, lists, and other effects. The rest of this page is a demonstration of how to use these features. After the first few sections, you will have to "teach yourself" by pressing the "edit" link (above or below) to see for yourself how various effects were achieved!

Let's say that you're editing a page about sports, and you mention soccer. Well, there's probably a Wiki page about soccer (and if there isn't, there should be) and you want to make the word a link to that article. Simple: type double square brackets around it like this and continue editing. That's it! If the page already exists, a link will be made to it. If the page doesn't already exist, a link will be made that allows someone to create it.

There are a few rules about making these links that you might run into. Foreign characters and punctuation cannot be used in the text of a link, so if you want to make a link to "John's Dog", you'll have to leave out the apostrophe. Also, the Wiki software will link to a page title that is the same as the text of your link, except that the first letter will be uppercased, and spaces may be condensed. For example, if you type card game,
it will be linked to a page entitled "Card game".

Older versions of the Wiki software only made one-word links LikeThis, and didn't require the brackets to make them links. You can still do that, but it's generally discouraged because it LooksFunny. It is handy to use singular words like "game" rather than "games", because that makes it easier to create links in other pages.

Finally, sometimes the text you would like to make into a link just doesn't make a good page title. In that case, you can specify both inside the brackets separated by a vertical bar like this: text of link. This will appear as "text of link", but will link to a page entitled "Page link".

Examples of Good links:

my new page

My new page

JohnSmith

Johns Dog

John's Dog

Bad links:

my_new_page (underscores not necessary)

My_new_page (underscores not necessary)

johnsmith (needs two capital letters or brackets)

John's Dog (will not link to the page you want it to link to)

See naming conventions when choosing names for pages!

Making a new page

There are two ways to make a new page:

1. As mentioned above, while you're editing the text of an old page, you can just put something in brackets. For example, you would type: my page. When you save the page you're editing, if the link you included doesn't exist, you will see a question mark after the text. Click on that question mark and you will be taken to a newly-created page that you can edit. Replace "Describe the new page here." with whatever text you want to put on the page!
2. Type the URL of the new page in the "address" line of your browser and hit return. The URL of the new page will be the text of a link, with the first letter uppercased and spaces replaced by underscores (see Wiki Canonization for more details about this). For example, in the URL above, you would replace

http://intranet.pdx.osdl.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?How_does_one_edit_a_page
with the new URL
http://intranet.pdx.osdl.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?Name_of_your_new_page
and then hit return.

See also how to start a page.

Demonstration area

• What follows is an area for demonstrating the various effects possible using Wiki, such as bold, italics, numbered lists, etc., etc.
• Click "edit" at the top or bottom of this page (i.e., the page you are now reading!) to see how these effects were achieved!!!
• If you don't click "edit" now you won't understand what's going on!!!

New paragraphs are made by simply pressing the "enter" or "return" key twice. If you press it just once, like this, a new paragraph will not be made (as you can see).

Here is
the proper way
to make single-spaced lines.

This line is indented.

This line is indented even farther.

Who knows how far it can go?

This line is indented by using an initial space,
              but since I didn't use a colon ( : ) 
  at the beginning of the line, it appears as a monospace font such as "Courier".  
 In other words, if you begin a paragraph with spaces, that 
     line will be both indented and in a monospace font.
This is very useful for importing monospace formatted tabular materials, especially source code. Also note that space-indented lines will not wrap!  They will simply increase the width of your window.

This line is in italics. (Using double single quote marks!)
And so is this one! (Using good old html tags!)
And this! (Using still different code! How versatile! How confusing! But any of them will do.)

This line is bold. (Using triple single quote marks!)
So is this one! (Using the standard html tag!)

Here is a new style link: Larry Sanger (see Free Links)
Here is an old style link: HomePage
Consider not capitalizing your page names: definition of philosophy; see naming conventions
the text of this link is different from the name of the page it links to
it really doesn't MatterWhat youType in the...link description. It's all linkéd!
An external link: http://www.nupedia.com/about.shtml
Another external link: Nupedia about page

If you type in the URL of a picture, it will be displayed rather than linked to:
http://www.wikipedia.com/wikia.gif

You don't have to create weird page titles, like Platos, just to make the plural or possessive form of a name. Plato's wouldn't work anyway. You can write: Plato's or (more cleverly) Plato's. In the old linking system you'd do it like this: JimboWales's homepage (using ""). (Just Say No to the old linking system; after all, you can now link to Jimbo Wales's homepage!) But it does look like you're stuck with Platos Republic, because Plato's Republic doesn't work, as you can see, although if you want to type a bit more you can cleverly create Plato's Republic.

Here is a numbered list:

1. Item 1
2. Item 2
3. Item 8

#Notice, this line isn't numbered because it is not flush left.

1. Neither is this line

Here is a bulleted list:

• Here's an item
• Here's another item
  • We can do bullets within bullets, as it were
    • Pretty nifty, huh?

You can make a horizontal "rule" (line) on a page: ---- Or two, if you wish:

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There are three ways to display, rather than parse, wiki code:

1. you can use the tag

2. you can use the <pre> tag

3. you can use the <nowiki> tag

The difference between <code> and <pre> is that the pre tag preserves line breaks, while the code tag does not. The nowiki tag works like the tag except that it doesn't use a monospace font. (We made liberal use of the tag on this page.)

Lines that \ end with backslashes \ will wrap if it is the *last* character on the line. If there is trailing spaces, the backslash won't cause word wrapping.

You can create subpages: /Talk
Sorry, but you cannot create sub-subpages: /Talk/TalkAboutTalk
You can link to other subpages: Charlize Theron/Filmography or even charlize Theron/Filmography.

We can do tables the old fashioned HTML way:

Item one	Item two
Item three	Item four

The    preformatted   text    approach   might 
be     a              better  way        to
do     columnar       types   of         tables.  ;-)

Sometimes you might need to use special characters, like these: ï¿?ï¿?α

You can make ^superscripts and _subscripts and you can control the font size and color!

• f(x) = a₀ + a₁x₁ + a₂x₂² + a₃x₃³ + ...

• f(x) = a₀ + a₁x₁ + a₂x₂² + a₃x₃³ + ...

If you want to redirect traffic going to one page to another page (with a better title, for example), then use the command #REDIRECT pagename at the top of the page. To look at the history of the old page, click on the "(redirected from OldPageName)" link at the top of the new page.

Practice editing pages in our SandBox!

Then, go forth and be bold in updating pages!

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This page is borrowed & adapted from Wikipedia.com, and is reusable under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License (FDL).