Help:Text formatting
MediaWiki Formatting is the technique of transforming text in articles. For example, making text bold, italics, or bold italics. A comprehensive tutorial follows.
Contents
[hide]Text Formatting
Simple Text Formatting
Bold, Italics
The following code will give you bold text:
'''BOLD TEXT GOES HERE'''
As you can see, three apostrophes the text gives you the desired format.
The following code will give you italic text:
''ITALIC TEXT GOES HERE''
Here, two apostrophes are required.
These two formatting tricks can be combined to make bold italic text, like so:
'''''BOLD AND ITALICS'''''
Headers
To create a header, surround the text you wish to make a header with a number of equals signs.
Here are the six types of headers:
=Header 1= ==Header 2== ===Header 3=== ====Header 4==== =====Header 5===== ======Header 6======
Results in:
Header 1
Header 2
Header 3
Header 4
Header 5
Header 6
If you have more than four headers in a page, a table of contents box listing the headers appears at the top.
More Complex Text Formatting
Boxes and Unformatting
To achieve a grey box with mono type text like the ones above, simply put a space before the line(s) you wish to place in the box, like so:
Whee, what fun!
And an example of multiple lines:
First. Second! Third?
Note that this does not stop any code in the boxes from being parsed.
i.e.
This text is still bold, though it's in a box
To prevent parsing, you must do this:
<nowiki>NON FORMATTED TEXT AND ANYTHING ELSE HERE</nowiki>
This removes all wiki formatting from the contained text.
Lists
Lists are a group of items that are, as the name implies, listed one by one on separate lines. There are two types of lists: ordered and unordered.
Ordered Lists
Each item in an ordered list is preceded by it's number in the list. To create an ordered list, simply insert the symbol # before each list item.
Example:
#This is number 1. #Two! #Three! #Four. #Five. Yawn... #etc...
Results in:
- This is number 1.
- Two!
- Three!
- Four.
- Five. Yawn...
- etc...
Unordered Lists
Each item in an unordered list is preceded by a small box. To create an unordered list, insert a * before each list item.
Example:
*This is unordered. *Oh, the chaos! *Pretty nice.
Results in:
- This is unordered.
- Oh, the chaos!
- Pretty nice.
Nested Lists
You can also nest both ordered and unordered lists.
This is how to do it:
*Cool. *Yeah. **Hey, it's a sub item! **This is great. ***Yup. ****It is. ***Really? **Of course. *Okay. #You can do that for numbered lists too. #Yup. ##It works. ##Yay! ###w00t! #Hurray!
Results in:
- Cool.
- Yeah.
- Hey, it's a sub item!
- This is great.
- Yup.
- It is.
- Really?
- Yup.
- Of course.
- Okay.
- You can do that for numbered lists too.
- Yup.
- It works.
- Yay!
- w00t!
- Hurray!
There is also a way to nest ordinary text, namely, to place the a colon (:) before the nested text.
Hi. :Nest! ::Double nest! :::Triple nest!
Results in:
Hi.
- Nest!
- Double nest!
- Triple nest!
- Double nest!
Links
Internal Links
To turn text into an internal link (i.e. a link to a page within the wiki), you format the text as follows:
[[FULL NAME OF ARTICLE HERE]]
This would link to the article FULL NAME OF ARTICLE HERE.
To link to an article but display text other than the article name, you format as follows:
[[FULL NAME OF ARTICLE HERE|TEXT TO DISPLAY HERE]]
This results in:
TEXT TO DISPLAY HERE
If a link that you post is colored red, it means the article does not exist yet.
External Links
To turn text into an external link (i.e. a link to a page outside the wiki), you format the text as follows:
[URL_OF_PAGE_HERE]
Note that there can not be any spaces in the URL.
To link to a website but display text other than the website's URL, you format as follows:
[http://URL_OF_PAGE_HERE TEXT TO DISPLAY HERE]
Note the space between the url of the page and the text to display. The above results in:
TEXT TO DISPLAY HERE
This concludes our article on basic text formatting. To learn about even more complex text formatting, it is recommended you read the Wikipedia articles.