Help:Wikitext

Wikitext is the syntax and keywords used by the MediaWiki software to format a page when using Enhanced editor. VisualEditor is intended to make it easier to edit without seeing any wikitext.

The Editing toolbar helps when creating new content. The Cheat sheet can be helpful in making changes to existing content,. IT is also recommended to develop your Basic Wiki Skills if you plan to regularly make changes using Enhanced editor.

See Wikipedia's Wiki Markup article for a complete description of this topic.

Capabilities

Wikitext allows you to:

• Make changes to the layout of the page such as adding
  • Sections
  • Bullets
  • Numbered lists
  • Lists

• Format
  • Text formatting
  • Adding special characters

• Links and URLs
  • Internal Links (Wikify)
  • External Links
  • Redirects
  • Interwiki link
  • Categories

Nowiki

In order for the software to interpret wiki markup, its parser first scans the page. When it sees its nowiki tags

<nowiki>...</nowiki> (escapes all contained wiki markup), and

<nowiki /> (escapes the interpretations it is designed to "break"),

it escapes its wikicode, so editors can document its markup using its markup.

Article editors can normalize the font of characters trailing [[...]]outside a wikilink, which would otherwise adhere to the wikilink font. They can also add line-spacing in the wikitext. Template editors: tag <nowiki> works only on its source page, not the target; also {{#tag:nowiki | content}}, although it wraps that content in nowiki tags, it also does a pre-save transform  on that content, which is entirely at odds with the intended purpose of nowiki for templates, subst, signatures, and the pipe-trick.

The two kinds of nowiki operate in different ways to target content, but they both remove meaning (subtract rendering) of wiki markup, then disappear into the background font. Nowiki does nothing toward rendering, but it can add newlines to wikitext (for readability), just like the HTML comment (the preferred method) can. Unlike it does for wiki markup, nowiki does not remove the meaning of character entities, either HTML or MediaWiki special characters.

There is only one meaning for what <nowiki>...</nowiki> contains, so it needs few examples; but the singular <nowiki /> tag "contains" many linkage structures, where it is expected between bracketing-pair characters or in the keyword area. So this section has many examples and few mis-examples.

For example, only at the beginning of a line (bol of wikitext, bol in a transclusion, or beginning of a table cell), do *, #, ; or : mean something.

Markup	Renders as
[markup]	[rendering]
[markup]	[rendering]
[markup]	[rendering]
[markup]	[rendering]
[markup]	[rendering]
[markup]	[rendering]
[markup]	[rendering]
[markup]	[rendering]

The rest of the section consists of simple, live examples showing how a single nowiki tag escapes entire linkage structures, beyond [[ wikilink ]] and {{ template }}:

{{pagename | parameter }}

[[ fullpagename | {{ pagename }} ]]

{{ pagename | [[ fullpagename ]] }}

{{pagename | {{pagename }} }}

Unless you use the two "balanced" nowiki tags, troubleshooting strip marker errors and template parameter-handling inconsistencies is a risk. Also, a rendering error may arise when two [[...]] square brackets are on the same line, or two {{...}} curly brackets are in the same section, but only when the two have the nowiki markup placed inconsistently.

Related

• Include only

External links

See Wikipedia's Wiki Markup article for a complete description of this topic.