Help:Editing

Editing Religion-wiki is easy. You can edit any page of this wiki (except some pages that may be protected from editing by an administrator). If you click on a red link, you will instantly be taken to the edit page for that article; this is because that article doesn't yet exist. Clicking the edit tab at the top of a page will also call up the edit page. If a page is divided into sections, you will see sectional edit links to the right of each section header. These allow you to edit just that section of an article.

Contents 1 Editing choices 2 Wiki mark-up 3 Section headings 4 New section 4.1 Subsection 4.1.1 Sub-subsection 5 Paragraphs and line breaks 6 Italic and bold text 7 Lists 8 Indents 9 Horizontal lines 10 Links, images, tables and special characters 11 See also

Editing choices

When editing a page, a number of options appear below the edit box. The first of these is Summary. When you make an edit, please write a short description of what you have done in the summary box. This description appears in the page history, watchlists and recent changes. If an edit has a summary, it is a lot easier for other members to follow what you are doing.

Below the summary box are two tick boxes. The first has the title This is a minor edit. Logged-in users can mark their edits as minor — a small m appears in the history next to the edit. Only use this option when you correcting a superficial error, like spelling. It is a way of telling other members that you have not just made a substative edit that they should check. The second tick box is titled Watch this page. By ticking this box, the page in question is added to your watchlist so that you can keep track of any changes to it.

Below these tick boxes are four buttons. The first is Save page: this returns your edit to the database, and makes your change live. The second, Show preview, allows you to see what your edit will look like without making it live. Previewing is recommended before saving. The third option, Cancel takes you out of the edit page to the article. Finally, Editing help opens a new browser window of this page.

Wiki mark-up

Wiki mark-up is way in which you can define certain features simply in edit pages. The edit box contains the plain text of an article marked with wiki features. The mark-up for these features can be seen in the following sections.

We shall use colour coding to make it easier to see what you type (the mark-up) and what you get (the interpreted page) thus:

What you type.

Section headings

To make longer pages easier to read, and to divide up their content, you may mark up section headings. This is done as follows:

== New section ==

looks like this:

=== Subsection ===

looks like this:

==== Sub-subsection ====

looks like this:

It is best to start with the == section as the basic mark-up. If an article contains four or more sections, it will instantly get a table of contents just before the first section.

Paragraphs and line breaks

Writing in paragraphs is easy in wiki mark-up. A single blank line between blocks of text is treated as a paragraph break. Thus,

Here is my first paragraph.

Here is my second paragraph.

produces:

A single line break,

Here is my first paragraph.
Here is my second paragraph.

doesn't create a break, but looks like:

Italic and bold text

To italicise text, place two single apostrophes at the beginning and at the end of the text.

''Here's some italic text.''

Do not confuse '' with ", the double quote mark.

For bold text, use three apostrophes instead:

'''Here's some bold text.'''

Lists

Bullet-point lists are created in wiki mark-up by using the asterisk (*) at the beginning of a new line. Thus,

*Point one.
*Point two.
*Point three.

is treated as:

Lists within lists are easy too:

*Point one.
**Point one's sub-point one.
**Point one's sub-point two.
***Point one's sub-point two's sub-sub-point one.
*Point two.

which makes:

Numbered lists simply use the hash sign (#) instead of the asterisk:

#Point one.
##Point one's sub-point one.
##Point one's sub-point two.
###Point one's sub-point two's sub-sub-point one.
#Point two.

which makes:

You can use any combination of the two methods together:

*Point one.
*#Point one's sub-point one.
*#Point one's sub-point two.
*#*Point one's sub-point two's sub-sub-point one.
*Point two.

produces::

If you want to create a list of dictionary-style definitions, you can introduce each topic with a semicolon (;) and give the definition after a colon (:):

;Topic one :this kind of thing usually comes first.
;Topic two
:is usually what comes next.

produces:

Indents

To indent text from the left-hand margin, simply place a colon (:) in front of it. More colons can be added to create a bigger indent.

:This is indented.
::This is more indented.

Horizontal lines

You can draw a horizontal line across a page — so as to divide up material — by typing four hyphens at the beginning of a new line.

Above the line.
----
Below the line.

Links, images, tables and special characters

Links are bits of clickable text that take you to another page. Take a look at Help:Links to find out to format yours.

Use the Special:Upload page to upload images and sound files to Religion-wiki (you have to be a logged in member of the community to perform this). To find out how to incorporate these files into a page, take a look at Help:Images.

If you would like to construct a table for a page or template, take a look at Help:Tables.

Religion-wiki can cope with a lot of different special characters. If you want to find out how to add diacritical marks to your letters or write in different alphabets, take a look at Help:Special characters.

See also

• Help:Contents.
• Wikia:Help:Tutorial.
• MetaWikipedia:Help:Editing.