User:Proteins/Start editing tutorial

We've already described how to start a new article. But what if your article exists and you'd like to improve it? Here are three methods to begin editing an article.

Edit this page

The simplest approach is to click on the "edit this page" tab at the top of the article, which is sandwiched between the "discussion" tab and the "history" tab. This opens the editing window for the whole article.

describe edit window and functions

wikEd

Sometimes it's hard to follow the text in the editing window because of all the references, images, and various other formatting commands. All registered users have access to a tool that color-codes the various types of formatting called wikEd. You can activate it by clicking on "my preferences" at the top, then on the last tab labeled "Gadgets", then in the box next to "wikEd", and finally on the Save button at the bottom. You might need to hit Cntrl-F5 to refresh your browser's cache so that it begins to take advantage of wikEd.

wikEd has other useful features, such as searching and replacing text. If you ever need to turn wikEd off, you can simply unclick its box and save yoru preferences once again.

Edit a section

A drawback of "edit this page" is that it opens the whole article. For short articles, that's not a problem, but as articles become longer, it becomes harder and harder to find.

Talk pages only: The "+/new section" tab

The most common method is to choose a section to work on and click on the edit link at the far right.