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User:Lquilter/Quick and dirty guide to editing Wikipedia

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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
  • 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:
"Hey Jane, I really loved the article you wrote! Lquilter (talk) 14:50, 25 October 2012 (UTC)
  • 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!