Help:Formatting

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Revision as of 16:26, 1 December 2006 by Chris (Talk) (Minor edits of certain sections e.g. spelling)

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Editing a page

To edit an article, simply click 'edit' at the very top of the page (next to the logo).

Creating a new page

To create a new page, simply enter its name in the search box on the left-hand side. If it doesn't already exist, you'll be given a chance to create it!

Basic Editing

Bold

To bold a phrase, simply place '''three apostrophes either side''' .

Italics

Italics are even easier! These are just ''two apostrophes!'' .

Underlines

To give underlines , unfortunately you'll have to use HTML. Surround the phrase with <u> and </u> to give an underlined word.

Combined bold and italics

To combine the two, just place '''''five apostrophes''''' either side of the phrase.

Signatures

To leave a signature, either place:

  • 3 tildes (~) - ~~~ which gives your username only - 82.19.18.11
  • 4 tildes (~) - ~~~~ which gives your username and a timestamp - 82.19.18.11 21:33, 28 September 2006 (GMT Standard Time)
  • 5 tildes (~) - ~~~~~ which gives just a timestamp - 21:33, 28 September 2006 (GMT Standard Time)

Signatures should always be used on talk pages.

Heading and subheadings

To create headings and subheadings, simply surround the words for the heading with '=': 

=One equals gives a 1st-level subheading=
==Two gives a slightly smaller one==
===Three is basically just large bold text===

And so on...

Horizontal lines and line breaks

Horizontal lines are placed like this: ---- (four dashes), giving:

Line breaks can be forced by simply leaving a blank line between paragraphs in the editing box.

Linking

Linking can be done in several ways:

  • Internal links - to link to an internal page, simply put [[two square brackets]] around the words to be linked. If the page hasn't yet been created, it'll show up in red.
    • To link to a page, but have a different name show up, simply use | and put the name to be shown second. For example, [[Main_Page|Click here to go back to the main page!]] , will show up as: Click here to go back to the main page!
  • External links - to link to an external website, you need to place the entire web address (including the http:// prefix) into [one square bracket] .
    • However, this time, to give a different name, you need to put a space ' ' at the end of the address and simply write the text to show up. For example, [http://www.google.com Google] will show up as: Google.
  • With the exception of the first letter, all links are case-sensitive and all spaces are converted to underscores. Thus, [[Main_Page]], [[main_Page]], [[Main Page]] and [[main Page]] will all link to the main page but [[MAin_Page]], [[Main page]], [[maiN Page]] etc. will not.

Redirects

To automatically redirect a user to another page, delete all text from the page and place this:

#REDIRECT [[Page_To_Redirect_To]]

in the normal editing box.

Lists

To create lists, either use:

  • * for a bulleted list:
    • Bullet one
    • Bullet two
    • Bullet three
  • # for a numbered list:


Bullets and numbers can be combined to give sub lists by just increasing the numbers of asterixs or hashes you use. Thus:

  1. List 1
    1. Sub list 2
      1. Sub list 3
    2. Back to 2
  2. and back to 1.

Indenting

To indent text , simply use a colon (':') . Multiple colons indents the text further each time. However, if you start to use a lot, it can get hard to read, so try to not use more than seven or eight before going back to normal.

Ignoring formatting

To ignore formatting around any particular phrase, just surround the phrase with <nowiki> tags. <nowiki> starts the formatting ignoring, and </nowiki> ends it.

Table of contents

To force a table of contents to appear, simply place ___TOC___ (three underscores each side) where you would like it (usually at the top).

Something to watch...

If you start the line with a space, the wiki interprets this as being formatted as code as shows it in a code box, like below: 

This isn't what we want!

As you can see, this pushes all the text away from it and makes it a lot harder to read. So make sure all your lines start right against the left margin!

Inserting images

To insert an image, you need to firstly upload it using Special:Upload (in the left sidebar). Give it a suitable name so that everyone knows what it's for - and one that's easy to type!

To place it on a page; just put 

[[Image:Image name here]].

If you want to add a caption, treat it as a link and do this: 

[[Image:Image name here|Caption name here]].

This will appear when a user hovers their mouse over the image.

Finally, you can use this syntax:

[[Image:Image name here|Position (left,right etc.)|thumb|100px|Underneath caption goes here]] to produce a thumbnail with explanatory text!

Please make sure image uploads are a reasonable (i.e. small) size!

Categories

To add a page to a category, simply use the syntax: 

[[Category:Name of category here]]

To add to multiple categories, just reuse this code. When adding to year groups, it's best to put the person's name like this: 

[[Category:Year group|Surname, Forename]]

Templates

There are also several templates you can use to edit your work. To find out how to use any of them, click on the link:

  • Colour text - this allows you to colour your text different colours!
  • Size text - this will make your text different sizes. (9 is the standard size.)
  • Delete this page - placing this template on your page will add it to a category to be deleted, reducing the amount of redundant pages.

Magic Words

There are several 'magic words' that can be used. These are automatically updated whenever the page is called from the server!

Word Example Explanation
{{CURRENTDAY}} 27 Displays the current day in numeric form.
{{CURRENTDAYNAME}} Wednesday Displays the current day in named form.
{{CURRENTDOW}} 3 Displays the current day as a number of the week (0=Sunday, 1=Monday...).
{{CURRENTMONTH}} 11 Displays the current month in numeric form.
{{CURRENTMONTHABBREV}} Nov Displays the abbreviation of the current month.
{{CURRENTMONTHNAME}} November Displays the current month in named form.
{{CURRENTMONTHNAMEGEN}} November Displays the name of the current month in genitive form. Wikis that don't support this will default to {{CURRENTMONTHNAME}}.
{{CURRENTTIME}} 02:46 Displays the current time of day (hours:minutes).
{{CURRENTWEEK}} 48 Displays the number of the current week (1-52).
{{CURRENTYEAR}} 2024 Returns the current year.
{{PAGENAME}} Formatting Returns the name of the current page, including all levels (Title/Subtitle/Sub-subtitle).


More help

If you want more help, or you want to do something which isn't covered here, try looking at Wikipedia's editing help for more in-depth and detailed coverage.

(If you see something on a page and you want to know how it's done; simply click 'edit this page' at the top and copy the code that you see. Then all you need to do is change the content!)

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