This is a Wikipedia
user page. This is not an encyclopedia article or the talk page for an encyclopedia article. If you find this page on any site other than Wikipedia, you are viewing a mirror site. Be aware that the page may be outdated and that the user in whose space this page is located may have no personal affiliation with any site other than Wikipedia. The original page is located at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:TransporterMan/Sandbox/10. |
Go to the log in link and either log in or sign up and then log in. Always edit signed in.
Only the lede section* and the references are absolutely required, all else is optional or can be added later by you or others.
The usual layout of an article is:
Wikipedia automatically creates a personal sandbox for you when you sign up. You can find it by clicking the sandbox link at the top or sidebar of a Wikipedia page. Or the direct url is /info/en/?search=User:Yourusername/sandbox. What you put in your sandbox will not ordinarily be edited or deleted by other users, unless it contains material which is absolutely prohibited by Wikipedia (negative or controversial unsourced statements about a living person, copyright violations, attack pages, or legal threats are the most common issues of that kind). If you're going to use it to draft a new article put {{ userspace draft}} at the top of the page.
Your sandbox is your free space in which to practice editing or develop articles or parts of articles. So long as you don't put stuff in it that cannot be on Wikipedia at all, such as copyright violations, it is very unlikely that any other editor or administrator will pay any attention whatsoever to what you have in your sandbox. In theory, you shouldn't store anything there indefinitely without at least occasionally editing it but that's not likely to cause a problem or a loss.
Line wrap: Lines automatically wrap in the editor and lines ending in a single carriage return (a single press of the "Enter" key) will also be wrapped as if the line break was not there unless the line ends with <br> or <br /> (not recommended unless needed for a special situation) or unless the first character on the next line is a indent, bullet, numbering, or heading character.
Paragraphs: Paragraphs are usually formed by double spacing (hit your enter key at the end of the paragraph, then hit it again) so there's a blank line between the paragraphs, but indent, bullet, numbering, and heading characters (see below) as the first character in a line will force a paragraph there.
Non-paragraph hard returns: You can also cause a hard line break and/or a paragraph by using the html code <br /> or <br>, but you ought to have a pretty good reason for doing this.
A space as the first character of a paragraph: Creates a plain-text box with limited formatting. You're never going to want that and if you want something similar to it there's better ways of doing it. Just don't.
Indenting: First-line-of-a-paragraph indenting is not done (there are ways of finagling around it, but it's not proper style for the encyclopedia, so don't — and especially don't try to do it by just spacing over, see above). Block indenting (so that all the lines of a paragraph are indented the same amount) is done by placing one or more colons (:) as the very first character of a line, with each additional colon indenting the paragraph a bit more.
Bullets: Are created by using an asterisk(*) either as the first character of a line or after one or more preceding asterisks or colons. So a single asterisk puts a bullet at the left margin and block-indents the following text at the same place two colons would have indented it; two asterisks puts a single bullet (not 2 bullets) at the place where two colons would have started the text and block indents the text where three colons would have done it, and so on. So :* or ** or ::: block indent the text at the same place, but the first two put a single bullet just to the left of the first line. Note that ::* is preferred over *** to retain consistency with how numbering works.
Numbering: Works just like bullets except paragraphs are numbered 1. 2. 3. and so on, but using ### to indent three levels can create inconsistent results, use ::# instead. Also any line break or blank line or indent-level change will reset the numbering to 1 and there is no simple way to reset it to the proper number. Outline-style numbering where there is a hierarchy of letters and numbers cannot be simply achieved.
Emphasis: Italics are invoked by putting two single quote marks before and after the material: ''this'' creates this. Bold facing works the same way except with three marks: '''this''' creates this. Five marks combine the two: '''''this''''' creates this. Underlining can be used (but shouldn't be, because some browsers and computers don't deal with it well) using the html code <u>text</u>. Use of emphasis in article space is generally to be avoided, because it usually gives emphasis to part of the text of an article which is not supported by the underlying sources.
Text size and styling: <big>Large</big>, <small>small</small>, <sup>superscript</sup>, <sub>subscript</sub> give: Large, small, superscript, subscript. Text styling such as color and font changes are possible through the use of html code. All of these are to be avoided unless there is a special and specific reason to use them.
Headings are created by pairs of series of equals marks (=) beginning at the left margin with the first mark as the very first character in the line. A blank line is automatically added both before and after the title, watch out for that and don't double up those lines. The usual formatting puts a space between the words in the title and the equals marks, but that space is removed when the title is shown in the document and it can be simply omitted when you create the title; including it makes the code a little easier to read, however. Note that the Wikipedia standard is to capitalize the first word of an internal heading but only capitalize proper nouns in any following words: "Place of birth" not "Place of Birth" but "Career in Paris" not "Career in paris".
== Title == (two = on each side) creates the primary internal section headings of an article.
=== Title === (three = on each side) creates a subheading.
It's possible to go down to four, five, or six on each side with each one becoming progressively smaller, but that's rarely justified. At six the text is just about the same size as normal bold faced text.
Linking to an article: Two square brackets: [[article]] links to another Wikipedia article. The full syntax is:
Linking to something else in Wikipedia or its sister projects: There are too many different variations of this to list all of them. Here are some examples of common ones, however. The stuff to the right of the pipe (|) can be whatever you want it to be:
Linking to a URL: One square bracket is used to link to a URL. Syntax:
I'm not going to go into much detail here, but the important thing to understand is that unlike square brackets which usually only create clickable links to things, {{Something}} (those are "curly brackets") causes whatever "Something" is to be copied from somewhere else, almost always somewhere within Wikipedia, and to be displayed at that point. {{Subst:Something}} causes the code of Something to be copied into your editing code at that point, replacing the {{Subst:Something}} tag. Either form can, and usualy does, take parameters, such as {{Something|red|reason=None|27}}. The problem is that there are some square-bracket codes (see the syntax for images, just below, for example) which work like curly-bracket codes and some curly-bracket codes which work like square-bracket codes.
The most basic syntax to insert an image on the right side of the page or in an infobox is:
That should go at the left margin of the first line of the paragraph even with the top of the image.
Galleries are beyond the scope of this cheatsheet, but should not be used without good reason. Wikipedia is not to be used as a gallery or repository for images, so images and galleries should only be here to illustrate the subject matter of the article. I'm going to recommend this as the basic syntax, however, starting with a couple of examples:
<gallery mode=packed heights=200px> File:Old map-Fort Worth-1886.jpg|1886 map of [[Fort Worth]]. Location: [[Amon Carter Museum of American Art]] File:Remington The Bronco Buster large Amon Carter Museum.jpg|[[Frederic Remington]], ''The Bronco Buster'', 1895-1909. Location: [[Amon Carter Museum of American Art]] File:[Filename]|[Caption] File:[Filename]|[Caption] File:[Filename]|[Caption] File:[Filename]|[Caption] </gallery>
Where:
The footnote:
To create a footnote put this code at the place in the text where the superscripted footnote number is to appear:
The citation (which goes inside the footnote):
Citations are normally entered using citation templates, of which there are approximately a million. I'm going to recommend that you use the ProveIt gadget in Preferences / Gadgets / Editing, which allows you to chose from 11 basic kinds of sources and automates the use of the templates through an interface that will show up at the bottom of your editing page. ProveIt will insert the <ref>...</ref> tags and the proper citation template. Just put your cursor where you want the citation and click "Add a Reference" in ProveIt. If your particular reference type doesn't match one of those provided by ProveIt, just pick the closest one.
Note that the "<ref> Name" tag on all the ProveIt reference types is to name the footnote (see the stuff about "Somename" just above) and once you've named a footnote, you can insert it again by clicking on "Insert this reference at cursor" on the entry for that note in the left hand column of ProveIt.
The reference section (where the citation shows up):
This is the simplest part of all. Just put {{reflist}} at the bottom of your article and all the footnotes/citations from your article will show up there. If you have a lot of footnotes use {{reflist|30em}} and the system will put your footnotes into columns.
Footnotes other than citations:
As noted above, just about anything can go between the <ref>...</ref> tags. Generally any information that is important enough to go into a footnote ought to just go into the article, but occasionally you may want to put something into a note. Remember that material in footnotes has to be cited just like the material in the article. Non-citation footnotes will just be mixed in with the citation footnotes. While it is possible to create separate sections for your textual notes from your citation notes, that's beyond the scope of this cheat sheet.
The construction of tables is beyond the scope of this cheat sheet, but here's some basic syntax.
{| class="wikitable sortable" |+ Caption title |- ! HeaderR0C1 !! HeaderR0C2 !! HeaderR0C3 |- | ExampleR1C1 || ExampleR1C2 || ExampleR1C3 |- | ExampleR2C1 || ExampleR2C2 || ExampleR2C3 |- | ExampleR3C1 || ExampleR3C2 || ExampleR3C3 |} |
{| class="wikitable sortable" |+ Caption title |- ! HeaderR0C1 ! HeaderR0C2 ! HeaderR0C3 |- | ExampleR1C1 | ExampleR1C2 | ExampleR1C3 |- | ExampleR2C1 | ExampleR2C2 | ExampleR2C3 |- | ExampleR3C1 | ExampleR3C2 | ExampleR3C3 |} |
both create exactly the same table:
HeaderR0C1 | HeaderR0C2 | HeaderR0C3 |
---|---|---|
ExampleR1C1 | ExampleR1C2 | ExampleR1C3 |
ExampleR2C1 | ExampleR2C2 | ExampleR2C3 |
ExampleR3C1 | ExampleR3C2 | ExampleR3C3 |
Where:
Hallie Ford Museum of Art
Bronwyn Oliver
{{
Infobox artist}}
{{
Infobox museum}}
{{
Infobox organization}}
This is a Wikipedia
user page. This is not an encyclopedia article or the talk page for an encyclopedia article. If you find this page on any site other than Wikipedia, you are viewing a mirror site. Be aware that the page may be outdated and that the user in whose space this page is located may have no personal affiliation with any site other than Wikipedia. The original page is located at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:TransporterMan/Sandbox/10. |
Go to the log in link and either log in or sign up and then log in. Always edit signed in.
Only the lede section* and the references are absolutely required, all else is optional or can be added later by you or others.
The usual layout of an article is:
Wikipedia automatically creates a personal sandbox for you when you sign up. You can find it by clicking the sandbox link at the top or sidebar of a Wikipedia page. Or the direct url is /info/en/?search=User:Yourusername/sandbox. What you put in your sandbox will not ordinarily be edited or deleted by other users, unless it contains material which is absolutely prohibited by Wikipedia (negative or controversial unsourced statements about a living person, copyright violations, attack pages, or legal threats are the most common issues of that kind). If you're going to use it to draft a new article put {{ userspace draft}} at the top of the page.
Your sandbox is your free space in which to practice editing or develop articles or parts of articles. So long as you don't put stuff in it that cannot be on Wikipedia at all, such as copyright violations, it is very unlikely that any other editor or administrator will pay any attention whatsoever to what you have in your sandbox. In theory, you shouldn't store anything there indefinitely without at least occasionally editing it but that's not likely to cause a problem or a loss.
Line wrap: Lines automatically wrap in the editor and lines ending in a single carriage return (a single press of the "Enter" key) will also be wrapped as if the line break was not there unless the line ends with <br> or <br /> (not recommended unless needed for a special situation) or unless the first character on the next line is a indent, bullet, numbering, or heading character.
Paragraphs: Paragraphs are usually formed by double spacing (hit your enter key at the end of the paragraph, then hit it again) so there's a blank line between the paragraphs, but indent, bullet, numbering, and heading characters (see below) as the first character in a line will force a paragraph there.
Non-paragraph hard returns: You can also cause a hard line break and/or a paragraph by using the html code <br /> or <br>, but you ought to have a pretty good reason for doing this.
A space as the first character of a paragraph: Creates a plain-text box with limited formatting. You're never going to want that and if you want something similar to it there's better ways of doing it. Just don't.
Indenting: First-line-of-a-paragraph indenting is not done (there are ways of finagling around it, but it's not proper style for the encyclopedia, so don't — and especially don't try to do it by just spacing over, see above). Block indenting (so that all the lines of a paragraph are indented the same amount) is done by placing one or more colons (:) as the very first character of a line, with each additional colon indenting the paragraph a bit more.
Bullets: Are created by using an asterisk(*) either as the first character of a line or after one or more preceding asterisks or colons. So a single asterisk puts a bullet at the left margin and block-indents the following text at the same place two colons would have indented it; two asterisks puts a single bullet (not 2 bullets) at the place where two colons would have started the text and block indents the text where three colons would have done it, and so on. So :* or ** or ::: block indent the text at the same place, but the first two put a single bullet just to the left of the first line. Note that ::* is preferred over *** to retain consistency with how numbering works.
Numbering: Works just like bullets except paragraphs are numbered 1. 2. 3. and so on, but using ### to indent three levels can create inconsistent results, use ::# instead. Also any line break or blank line or indent-level change will reset the numbering to 1 and there is no simple way to reset it to the proper number. Outline-style numbering where there is a hierarchy of letters and numbers cannot be simply achieved.
Emphasis: Italics are invoked by putting two single quote marks before and after the material: ''this'' creates this. Bold facing works the same way except with three marks: '''this''' creates this. Five marks combine the two: '''''this''''' creates this. Underlining can be used (but shouldn't be, because some browsers and computers don't deal with it well) using the html code <u>text</u>. Use of emphasis in article space is generally to be avoided, because it usually gives emphasis to part of the text of an article which is not supported by the underlying sources.
Text size and styling: <big>Large</big>, <small>small</small>, <sup>superscript</sup>, <sub>subscript</sub> give: Large, small, superscript, subscript. Text styling such as color and font changes are possible through the use of html code. All of these are to be avoided unless there is a special and specific reason to use them.
Headings are created by pairs of series of equals marks (=) beginning at the left margin with the first mark as the very first character in the line. A blank line is automatically added both before and after the title, watch out for that and don't double up those lines. The usual formatting puts a space between the words in the title and the equals marks, but that space is removed when the title is shown in the document and it can be simply omitted when you create the title; including it makes the code a little easier to read, however. Note that the Wikipedia standard is to capitalize the first word of an internal heading but only capitalize proper nouns in any following words: "Place of birth" not "Place of Birth" but "Career in Paris" not "Career in paris".
== Title == (two = on each side) creates the primary internal section headings of an article.
=== Title === (three = on each side) creates a subheading.
It's possible to go down to four, five, or six on each side with each one becoming progressively smaller, but that's rarely justified. At six the text is just about the same size as normal bold faced text.
Linking to an article: Two square brackets: [[article]] links to another Wikipedia article. The full syntax is:
Linking to something else in Wikipedia or its sister projects: There are too many different variations of this to list all of them. Here are some examples of common ones, however. The stuff to the right of the pipe (|) can be whatever you want it to be:
Linking to a URL: One square bracket is used to link to a URL. Syntax:
I'm not going to go into much detail here, but the important thing to understand is that unlike square brackets which usually only create clickable links to things, {{Something}} (those are "curly brackets") causes whatever "Something" is to be copied from somewhere else, almost always somewhere within Wikipedia, and to be displayed at that point. {{Subst:Something}} causes the code of Something to be copied into your editing code at that point, replacing the {{Subst:Something}} tag. Either form can, and usualy does, take parameters, such as {{Something|red|reason=None|27}}. The problem is that there are some square-bracket codes (see the syntax for images, just below, for example) which work like curly-bracket codes and some curly-bracket codes which work like square-bracket codes.
The most basic syntax to insert an image on the right side of the page or in an infobox is:
That should go at the left margin of the first line of the paragraph even with the top of the image.
Galleries are beyond the scope of this cheatsheet, but should not be used without good reason. Wikipedia is not to be used as a gallery or repository for images, so images and galleries should only be here to illustrate the subject matter of the article. I'm going to recommend this as the basic syntax, however, starting with a couple of examples:
<gallery mode=packed heights=200px> File:Old map-Fort Worth-1886.jpg|1886 map of [[Fort Worth]]. Location: [[Amon Carter Museum of American Art]] File:Remington The Bronco Buster large Amon Carter Museum.jpg|[[Frederic Remington]], ''The Bronco Buster'', 1895-1909. Location: [[Amon Carter Museum of American Art]] File:[Filename]|[Caption] File:[Filename]|[Caption] File:[Filename]|[Caption] File:[Filename]|[Caption] </gallery>
Where:
The footnote:
To create a footnote put this code at the place in the text where the superscripted footnote number is to appear:
The citation (which goes inside the footnote):
Citations are normally entered using citation templates, of which there are approximately a million. I'm going to recommend that you use the ProveIt gadget in Preferences / Gadgets / Editing, which allows you to chose from 11 basic kinds of sources and automates the use of the templates through an interface that will show up at the bottom of your editing page. ProveIt will insert the <ref>...</ref> tags and the proper citation template. Just put your cursor where you want the citation and click "Add a Reference" in ProveIt. If your particular reference type doesn't match one of those provided by ProveIt, just pick the closest one.
Note that the "<ref> Name" tag on all the ProveIt reference types is to name the footnote (see the stuff about "Somename" just above) and once you've named a footnote, you can insert it again by clicking on "Insert this reference at cursor" on the entry for that note in the left hand column of ProveIt.
The reference section (where the citation shows up):
This is the simplest part of all. Just put {{reflist}} at the bottom of your article and all the footnotes/citations from your article will show up there. If you have a lot of footnotes use {{reflist|30em}} and the system will put your footnotes into columns.
Footnotes other than citations:
As noted above, just about anything can go between the <ref>...</ref> tags. Generally any information that is important enough to go into a footnote ought to just go into the article, but occasionally you may want to put something into a note. Remember that material in footnotes has to be cited just like the material in the article. Non-citation footnotes will just be mixed in with the citation footnotes. While it is possible to create separate sections for your textual notes from your citation notes, that's beyond the scope of this cheat sheet.
The construction of tables is beyond the scope of this cheat sheet, but here's some basic syntax.
{| class="wikitable sortable" |+ Caption title |- ! HeaderR0C1 !! HeaderR0C2 !! HeaderR0C3 |- | ExampleR1C1 || ExampleR1C2 || ExampleR1C3 |- | ExampleR2C1 || ExampleR2C2 || ExampleR2C3 |- | ExampleR3C1 || ExampleR3C2 || ExampleR3C3 |} |
{| class="wikitable sortable" |+ Caption title |- ! HeaderR0C1 ! HeaderR0C2 ! HeaderR0C3 |- | ExampleR1C1 | ExampleR1C2 | ExampleR1C3 |- | ExampleR2C1 | ExampleR2C2 | ExampleR2C3 |- | ExampleR3C1 | ExampleR3C2 | ExampleR3C3 |} |
both create exactly the same table:
HeaderR0C1 | HeaderR0C2 | HeaderR0C3 |
---|---|---|
ExampleR1C1 | ExampleR1C2 | ExampleR1C3 |
ExampleR2C1 | ExampleR2C2 | ExampleR2C3 |
ExampleR3C1 | ExampleR3C2 | ExampleR3C3 |
Where:
Hallie Ford Museum of Art
Bronwyn Oliver
{{
Infobox artist}}
{{
Infobox museum}}
{{
Infobox organization}}