6–Formatting, writing using a Wiki
If you have a compatible browser, an edit toolbar can be automatically displayed, provided that this has been set in your preferences. The tool bar is similar to a word processor tool bar and has the basic formatting functions as buttons–eg bold, italic, links etc. This functions partly as a typing aid and partly as a reminder of the available functions. Example below:
An image should appear at this position in the text. To use the entire page scan as a placeholder, edit this page and replace "{{missing image}}" with "{{raw image|Wikipedia Training Manual.pdf/18}}". Otherwise, if you are able to provide the image then please do so. For guidance, see Wikisource:Image guidelines and Help:Adding images. |
When using buttons from the edit tool bar you will see the Wiki uses Mark Up symbols in the output of the edit box. Wikipedia uses text codes to create particular elements of the page (e. g., headings). This mark-up language is known as Wikitext (or Wiki-markup) and is designed for ease of editing. Writing in plain text is good, because when making simple alterations, such as spelling corrections, text is all we need to use. However, problems emerge when we want to add special formatting–if only plain text can be included, how do we add bold, italics, or headings? The answer is Wikipedia’s use of text formatting; see the table below for a list of what to use when formatting and an example below:
5.1–Formatting Cheat Sheet
Description | What you type | What you get | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Italic text | ''Italic'' | Italic | |||
Bold text | '''Bold''' | Bold | |||
Bold and Italic text | '''''Bold and italic''''' |
Bold and italic | |||
Link to another Wikipedia page | [[William Shakespeare]] |
William Shakespeare | |||
Link to another Wikipedia page with adjusted title | [[name of page | adjusted title]] Eg [[William Shakespeare| Shakespeare]] |
Shakespeare | |||
Link outside Wikipedia (external link) | [http://www.abc.net.au| ABC website] |
ABC website | |||
Add an image with caption | [[File:Example.png|thumb|this is where the caption goes]] |
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Add a page to a category | [[Category: Name of Category ]] |
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Bulleted list | * One |
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Numbered list | #One |
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