Help:Whitespace
People in New Zealand refer to this penguin as the "Blue Penguin" or "Little Blue Penguin." It is known as the Fairy Penguin in Australia. Their distinctive slate- or indigo-blue coloration on the top of their bodies and their diminutive size—they are the smallest penguins in the world—give rise to these common names. Eudyptula, the scientific name of their genus, means "good little diver," which they are. These penguins never move. They live on their island and the mainland in the Southern Hemisphere year-round. They leave the land in groups at dawn under cover of darkness to forage in shallow inshore waters, spend the day at sea, and return to land at dusk. Flocks are shielded from predators by their behavior from dawn to dusk.
Causes of whitespace
Table of contents
The Blue Penguin (Eudyptula minor) has a place with the family Spheniscidae, an unmistakable
gathering of flightless, pelagic seabirds that possess the Southern side of the equator. The Blue Penguin, the smallest of the penguin species, is found naturally in cooler waters off Australia and New Zealand's southern coast. It weighs about one kilogram and stands about 40 centimeters tall. As a form of counteractive camouflage, Blue Penguins have dense, waterproof plumage that is pale power-blue to dark slaty blue-grey on the dorsal side and white on the ventral side.
The number of subspecies that inhabit E. minor's extents is the subject of ongoing debate. The White-flippered penguin, E. minor ablosignata, is thought by some experts to be a distinct species rather than a subspecies. These
penguins are described by the presence of a white edge on both the front and back sides of the flippers and paler plumage on their backs. There are about 350 000 to 600 000 breeding pairs of Blue Penguins in Australia and New Zealand as a whole, according to estimates. Even though it is thought that the number is stable, there are concerns that there are fewer breeding pairs in some places.
It is also possible to produce your own table of contents as follows:
{| id="toc" class="toc" summary="Contents"
! {{MediaWiki:Toc}}
|-
|[[#Heading 1|Heading 1]] {{·}} [[#Heading 2|Heading 2]] {{·}} [[#Heading 3|Heading 3]]
[[#Heading 4|Heading 4]] {{·}} [[#Heading 5|Heading 5]] {{·}} [[#Heading 6|Heading 6]]
__NOTOC__
|}
In an automatically generated table of contents, there will be one listing per line. But in a self-produced table of contents, multiple listings can be condensed into one line, as much as space allows, using the line break (<br />) text to mark the end of a line. The drawback to this is that you will have to manually add, remove, or modify headings as they are edited on the page. Still, it'll reduce the amount of whitespace on the page.
Templates
Whitespace cannot easily be avoided when a page with little text, often a stub, contains an infobox or similar vertical template that is quite tall along with a navbox or similar horizontal template at the bottom, and the amount of text on the page takes up far less space than the template to the left. Even without a horizontal template, there may still be a lot of whitespace to the left of the template between the final line of text and the category box at the bottom.
Images
Sometimes, images can contribute to whitespace. But the size of images can be controlled, so if an image is causing there to be a lot of whitespace, it may be worth reducing the size of the image, even just a little, in order to fill more of that space with text (depending on display width). Beware, though, of making one image significantly narrower than all others.
On a short page, a single image may be to blame for whitespace. If the height of the image is greater than that of the text, there will be some whitespace at the bottom.
On a longer page divided by multiple headings, it may be desirable to provide a small amount of whitespace by using the {{Clear}} family of templates so the image does not protrude into the next paragraph or section. Using several blank lines, <br /> tags or {{Break}} will not work correctly for all display widths, and surplus blank lines are removed by a number of processes.
Many infoboxes take an image, so if an image is placed there, it'll add more height that may benefit from balancing with text and other left-justified content.
Invisible comments
Comments in the wikicode added by <!-- Comment --> can contribute to whitespace. Format the comment to avoid this, by ensuring either that the initial < touches the text immediately beforehand, or that the final > touches the text immediately afterwards:
... the end of a paragraph. <!-- Don't use hidden comments in this manner --> The beginning of a paragraph ... ... the end of a paragraph. <!-- but doing it this way is fine -->The beginning of a paragraph ... ... the end of a paragraph.<!-- and so is doing it like this --> The beginning of a paragraph ...
Addressing the whitespace issue
Sometimes, when you have undesirable whitespace, the best way to solve the problem is to expand the article (with suitable content).
Sometimes, a minor fix will help eliminate or reduce whitespace. This may involve adding or removing one blank line from some part of the page, re-ordering templates, or the use of a gallery for multiple images. If an embedded list creates white space, using two or more columns may solve the problem.
Caveats
Avoid "fixing" white space issues which are peculiar to your combination of screen, window, and font sizes, your choice of browser, your image settings, and so on. Check with other settings or systems, or ask other editors to check them for you.
Avoid "fixes" which break the appearance of the page on mobile devices. Again, if you do not have a suitable device on which to check, other editors can advise you.