User:Lquilter/Quick and dirty guide to editing Wikipedia
Wikipedia editing can be super-simple. Here's my quick-and-dirty guide to editing Wikipedia:
First remember (a) you can always hit the SHOW PREVIEW button instead of the SAVE PAGE button, to see what it would look like first; and (b) don't worry about messing up formatting -- someone else will probably come along and clean it up! (Wikipedians love to do that.)
- Basic formatting
- BOLD by using three single-quotes together. Example:
- I want '''this text''' to be bold.
- It looks like: I want this text to be bold.
- ITALICIZE by using two single-quotes together. Example:
- I want ''this text'' to be italicized.
- It looks like: I want this text to be italicized.
- Make a bulleted list by using an asterisk for each bullet. Example:
- * red
- * blue
- * green
- To start a new paragraph just hit return a couple of times and start on a new line!
- To indent text, just put a colon at the beginning of the line. Or more than one! Each colon is about a tab's worth of indent. Example:
- ::: The Way We Were which looks like this:
- The Way We Were
- LINKING
- URLS are automatically linked like this http://nyt.com/
- If you want to show text and not a URL, use single square brackets, like this:
- [http://nyt.com/ New York Times]
- That will display like this: New York Times
- To make a link to a wikipedia article, use double square brackets around the article title, like this:
- The renowned educator, [[Paulo Freire]], was born in 1921.
- HEADINGS
- To make a heading, just use two equal signs at the beginning the line, then the heading text, then two equal signs again -- like this:
- == Early life ==
- If you want to make a subheading of that heading, use three equal signs instead of two; a subheading of that uses four equal signs instead of three!
- REFERENCING
Wikipedia has lots of tools to help you with citations and references. Once you're comfortable with Wikipedia, start playing around with them. In the meantime, just reference it old-school in whatever citation format you like. Some other Wikipedia editor will clean it up!
For example: Paulo Freire was born in Brazil. (Gadotti, p.25) and then at the bottom of the page, just create a references list, like this:
- References
- Moacir Gadotti, Reading Paulo Freire: His Life and Work (SUNY Press 1994)
- WIKIPEDIA MISCELLANEA
- When you talk to someone on a "talk page", you can "sign" your note very easily just by using four tildes in a row, like this:
- "Hey Jane, I really loved the article you wrote! ~~~~'
- Which produces something that looks like this:
- Try using the SHOW PREVIEW button and your sandbox to play around.
- Use "edit summaries" to describe your changes -- it helps other Wikipedia editors help you!