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.

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 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:

1. This is number 1.
2. Two!
3. Three!
4. Four.
5. Five. Yawn...
6. 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?
  • Of course.
• Okay.

1. You can do that for numbered lists too.
2. Yup.
   1. It works.
   2. Yay!
      1. w00t!
3. 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!

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.