Help talk:Wikitext/Archive 1

Where is full documentation?

This page is missing a bunch of tags. For example it does not document <ref> or <source>. Where is either a link to this documentation or the description itself? Thank you. Jrincayc (talk) 13:40, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm afraid as far as I know this is the page that gives the best index, and yes needs more work ... the link for 'source' is hidden away, (mw:Extension:SyntaxHighlight GeSHi), and any mention of 'ref' seems to be missing!

I started a section on using references, I only know a few attributes myself so please help by adding any I missed Frequencydip (talk) 17:56, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

(Wikipedia:Footnotes), please list any others you find missing. --Lee∴V (talk • contribs) 19:48, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

The page Help:Wikitext examples used to have examples for the 'ref' and 'source' tags. Until someone deleted all the text on that page and made it into a redirect[1]. Is it better to (a) unto that delete and restore that page, or (b) merge all the information that was on that page into this Help:Wiki markup page? --68.0.124.33 (talk) 05:42, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Most of that previous page was merged, or at least covered by this one.. obviously not 'ref' which we should merge/create a section for...maybe with mention of the cite templates? Lee∴V (talk • contribs) 22:28, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Just a little warning: The documention will always be incomplete, since Wikipedia is changing and programmers are known for being lazy with documentation (like everybody else: see the summaries in page histories). -- Tomdo08 (talk) 10:00, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

I will complete it i am a researcher mühl (talk) 22:14, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

Underlining

Shouldn't there be an underlining for the general guidelines of writing? I tried adding it twice, all to no avail (because both got deleted). QM400032 (talk) 13:01, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

I think the consensus is that the subject is sufficiently covered at MOS:BADEMPHASIS and WP:Underlining. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 13:13, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

If underlining is to be addressed at all in general guidelines, it should be discouraged—which is why we don’t have wiki markup for it (... is HTML). Or do you have a case where underlining is more appropriate than italicizing? —Frungi (talk) 15:33, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

I’m sorry that you keep getting reverted, but this page is primarily about wiki markup. While the site also supports a good amount of HTML markup, HTML is not wiki markup, and is not the subject of this page. If a bit of HTML is in common editor use in the project (e.g., <ins>...</ins> and <del>...</del> when ~~editing~~ revising Talk page posts), it may be included here, but I really don’t think that’s true for ... underlining or CSS background colors. —Frungi (talk) 21:59, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

Actually, it IS true:

...
gives you
...
QM400032 (talk) 01:16, 18 May 2013 (UTC)‎

Um… okay, really not sure what you’re trying to say here. Underlining ellipses is not something that Wikipedia editors commonly do, so my point stands.

Also, your signature contains no links to your user page or Talk page, so you should probably fix that. —Frungi (talk) 01:26, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

The ellipsis is a standard technique for representing markup whose actual content is immaterial, see the documentation at {{tag}}. QM400032 (talk · contribs) could have written some underlined text gives you some underlined text.

I think that what QM400032 is saying is that since the ... markup does have a visible effect, it should be described on this page. We are not saying that the ... markup should be excluded because it doesn't work - we are saying that it should be excluded from the page Help:Wiki markup because (i) it's not Wiki markup, but HTML, and as such is sufficiently described at Help:HTML in wikitext; (ii) we should not be encouraging the use of techniques that other pages (such as Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Text formatting) have stated should not be used. We should have consistent policies, and apply them consistently. --Redrose64 (talk) 08:58, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Should the output of redirects be shown?

NOTE: This thread is about the Help:Wiki markup#Redirects section of the page, and this change (Note added by Quiddity (talk) 08:31, 25 May 2013 (UTC))

In a lot of the examples on this page, the output of the markup is shown alongside the use of the markup. Another editor has attempted to add the output of redirects:

United States

But since redirects generally aren’t (and aren’t meant to be) seen this way, I question whether this is useful. Thoughts? —Frungi (talk) 17:57, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Alternatively, we could show (Redirected from …), which would be better, I think, but the examples don’t name a source page. Problem is this example can’t be formatted with existing CSS (it’s an IDed <div>, not a class), so it can’t reliably match the appearance; and again, not sure how useful it would be to include. —Frungi (talk) 19:37, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

I see no purpose served by displaying redirect output. Huon (talk) 18:55, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Actually, I, as the person who MADE the edit, do see some reasons to make the edit:

It could be useful for picky users who wish to create a redirect page.
It gives editors a feeling of how their pages look.

QM400032 (talk) 01:49, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

But your second point isn’t true. The pages look like the target pages. That’s the whole point of redirecting. The process is mostly invisible to the reader, unless something goes wrong (like a double redirect).

As to your first point, I’m really not sure what you mean. A redirect page is blank except for the #REDIRECT. Could you clarify your point? —Frungi (talk) 02:43, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

Added main link to Help:Redirect which covers this in full. -- Gadget850^talk 13:32, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

I've added a "Note" at the top of this thread, making it easier for people who come directly to the talkpage thread, to understand what the hell everyone is talking about. I hope this meme propagates. –Quiddity (talk) 08:31, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

The "==heading==" code is misleading.

I think the "==heading==" template should be changed to "==topic==" and "===subtopic===" and "====subtopic of subtopic====". By using heading while showing different text sizes, we indicate that it is a font, instead of an outline.

TheUnknownNinjaNN2 (talk) 14:34, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

How about adding a line a la "Two == are used for sections, more for sub-sections, sub-sub-sections and so on." to clarify the use? Huon (talk) 05:51, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

What does "a la" mean? That idea does sound better, though. TheUnknownNinjaNN2 (talk) 22:40, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

It's from the French, see wikt:fr:à la#Locution prépositive also wikt:fr:a la#Locution prépositive, or if you prefer English, wikt:à la#Preposition also wikt:a la#Preposition. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:49, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks.

As for the issue, should I go make a change? What is the consensus?

TheUnknownNinjaNN2 (talk) 23:30, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

Don't know what you mean by font. The hatnote for the section leads you to Help:Section, which explains in depth. -- Gadget850^talk 00:17, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

Could do something like this, but honestly it looks a bit silly:

Markup	Renders as
== Section ==	Section
=== Subsection ===	Subsection
==== Sub-subsection ====	Sub-subsection
===== Sub-sub-subsection =====	Sub-sub-subsection
====== Sub-sub-sub-subsection ======	Sub-sub-sub-subsection

—Frungi (talk) 00:41, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, but code DOES look silly. The meaning is made extremely obvious so people don't mess stuff up. I see no reason why someone shouldn't do the same for Wikicode.

TheUnknownNinjaNN2 (talk) 06:19, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

I meant the wording: “Sub-sub-sub-subsection.” But you have a point—that does make the meaning glaringly obvious. It just shouldn’t be comically so. —Frungi (talk) 06:40, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

I don't see the comedy. I guess we need an appropriate name for each level?

TheUnknownNinjaNN2(Talk,Always willing to discuss this subject) 07:21, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

I meant comic as in ridiculous or ludicrous, not comedic. —Frungi (talk) 07:38, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

I’ve edited the page, replacing the ==Heading== examples with a subset of the above. I’ve also split it into rows, as I’ve just done above. —Frungi (talk) 07:38, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

I'm dropping out and unwatching. -- Gadget850^talk 10:55, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

Dropping out and unwatching?

TheUnknownNinjaNN2(Talk,Always willing to discuss this subject) 20:17, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

{{Expand list|date=August 2011}} {|class="wikitable sortable"

Is this document supposed to be a complete reference for the WikiMedia markup language?

If not, then please put a link to the complete reference somewhere in the intro text. I was referred to this page form another summary page and neither is providing any help in trying to understand the language '{{Expand list|date=August 2011}} {|class="wikitable sortable"'

That I find in the article here List_of_cities_in_China_by_population.

The goal is to get the column like "Built-Up Area" to treat the data as numbers and sort appropriately. Instead the data is sorted as if it is text and the first number of the data is sorted, so that 5,000 is before 300 and then 1,000,000 is last.

So two issues:

1) Provide a clear source with complete markup language

2) If you by chance know how to get the table to sort by number, that would be great.

Thanks.Sthubbar (talk) 05:59, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

There is no single page listing all the possible markup and issues. Within Help:Wiki markup, tables are mentioned in the navigation box at the top right, and in the section Help:Wiki markup#Tables. Both of those take you to Help:Table - a very long page - and from there you can get to Help:Sorting - another very long page.

I've made an edit at List of cities in China by population, following the advice at Help:Sorting#Forcing a column to have a particular data type. -- John of Reading (talk) 06:22, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

As John pointed to, {| markup is how wiki tables are made, and information about it can be found on that page. I really don’t think it would be practical to have all of this information collated on a single page; it would be ridiculously long, I think, and harder to find what you were looking for.

The first thing you mentioned, {{Expand list|date=August 2011}}, is a template. Templates’ effects can be very different from one to the next, but you can find information about them at Help:Template or Help:A quick guide to templates. —Frungi (talk) 07:10, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

small-size text

I think i'm having a problem generating or seeing small-size text. The instruction for doing that is e.g.: (this text should appear small) . I know that used to work. (Such instruction is given in this talk page's associated article or Help Page. There do a Find for 'small text'.) But when i do that now, the text at issue does not appear small to me. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance. Bo99 (talk) 18:09, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

It looks fine to me: for example, I see this text as a smaller font size; to be exact, it's 9.9px instead of 12.7px. Where have you tried to use ..., that is not working? --Redrose64 (talk) 20:21, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks very much. Your above words 'this text' are the same size as all your other text, on my screen. I got the same type of result when i used the coding on various test pages, e.g. this test page. The problem is that my Internet browser is Mozilla Firefox, not Microsoft Internet Explorer. I just found an Internet Explorer copy on my pc, loaded it, and now i see that your above words 'this text' are indeed smaller than your other text. So the problem is Mozilla Firefox. I will report the problem to Mozilla. Thanks again. Bo99 (talk) 21:00, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

I use Firefox... and it's always shown small text just fine. Perhaps you've got a custom setting that overrides this. For example, open the "Tools" menu, and select "Options", then "Content". Under "Fonts & Colors" you should find Advanced; click that, and find "Minimum font size". What is selected from the menu there? --Redrose64 (talk) 22:20, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Redrose, thank you so much. You are exactly right. The problem was Firefox's 'Minimum font size'. Your analysis was right, you wrote it right, and you wrote it promptly. Thanks again. Bo99 (talk) 22:46, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

References and citing sources table

i'm confused by this table entry under References and citing sources:

A complete reference tag	`<ref name="WikiMarkup">{{cite web \|url=http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Help:Wiki_markup \|title=Help:Wiki markup \|publisher=Wikimedia Foundation}}</ref>`

in not sure why the url is given as http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Help:Wiki_markup,

instead of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Wiki_markup.

i was trying to learn citations, and how to make the "|title=" part of it, so the citation i was making wouldn't be the long messy url. in this example, the url (unnecessarily?) ends with "title=Help:Wiki_markup", which is immediately followed by the markup for the title which is identical except for the underscore "|title=Help:Wiki markup".

does what i'm asking make any sense? i'm a super novice editor, so i'm not sure if there's a reason for choosing one url over the other. ≈Sensorsweep (talk) 18:59, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

Some websites permit a given page to be reached via more than one URL, and Wikipedia is one such. Any Wikipedia page whose URL is of the pattern http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/pagename may also be reached as http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=pagename and indeed also as http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=pagename&action=view In general, you should use the shortest form that is guaranteed to reach the desired page. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:27, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

Just coming and going

My wiki markups just dissapeared. They are there like every fifth edit. How can I get it back? What is wrong? Hafspajen (talk) 00:28, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

This is an ongoing issue for many people. You might want to follow the discussion happening at WP:VPT#‎Skin and gadget issues 16 May 2014. — Makyen (talk) 00:44, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

Hm, now is back... but maybe it was you who mend it?

Hafspajen (talk) 01:49, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

Not me. It has been happening off and on for a few/several hours. It may, or may no, be fixed at this point. In other words, it may stop working again. People are working on the problem. If you want, you can follow the thread I linked above. — Makyen (talk) 01:59, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

I'm having problems with "nowiki" not working. Is this the same problem and is it still being investigated? --Ronz (talk) 18:30, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

@Ronz: What page is this on? What are you attempting to achieve by the use of <nowiki>...</nowiki>?? --Redrose64 (talk) 19:16, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for taking an interest. I first noted it on my personal page that I use for notes and reference, where I have items like {{subst:welcomeg}}
that I can quickly refer to and copy: User:Ronz/notes#Spam. I'm guessing that perhaps something previous on the page is interfering...--Ronz (talk) 19:23, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

I copied the section to the top where it works, so it's likely something is interfering. --Ronz (talk) 19:28, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

Ah, you mean the UNIQ...QINU stuff? See Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 128#some sort of mediawiki error is happening. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:15, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

That's it. Thanks. Glad it's fixed. --Ronz (talk) 21:32, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

Where to go with help requests?

Hey guys. I'm having trouble with my Talk page in that all the text is being put on the right-hand side. I've just recently come back to Wikipedia after a 4-year hiatus so am unfamiliar with all the intricacies of its codes, so where could I go to get assistance in making new messages and so on go and stay on the left - and indeed if further formatting problems arise in the future(not sure if this is the right place)? I don't actually remember having this issue before... Would appreciate pointers! AyrtonProst ^Radio 12:50, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

There's a "close table" markup (|}) missing above the first section header, after your archive box. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 13:13, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

@Ayrton Prost: There's also a spurious </center> - if you replace that with the |} table-end marker, it should fix the layout. --Redrose64 (talk) 13:40, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

It worked! Thank you so much, friends! AyrtonProst ^Radio 13:54, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Formatting dates and numbers

I know this page is about wiki markup, but considering the fact that the Help:Formatting page redirects to Help:Wiki markup, then I think the page should include a little bit of information about templates like {{date}} and {{val}}, because this is where the users will land if they try to learn about formatting the text.

I am an experienced user (I would say) but I just had to ask silly questions at Wikipedia:Help desk#Date conversion templates because I did not know where else to look for.

If those things don't fit here, then Help:Formatting should be a distinct page, teaching about such templates.

Also, there should be some "Formattting disambiguation" since there are many distinct formatting guides:

— Ark25 (talk) 21:45, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

Hi. While I'm not an expert I'll attempt to answer your query.

Templates are a big problem, at least how I see it. The main problem being the vast number of them. Now you're probably aware that Wikipedia:Template messages exist which is hierarchical list of templates, divided into the following. For main (article) namespace there is a total of 17 sub-categories listed. In addition, there are 8 other boxes, for templates usually used on other other namespaces. Also, the is a navbox at the bottom which has a handy search function, as well as another search box on the page.

Now if you look through these you'll notice just how many are listed. And there is a lot. Now if all these were transferred to the wiki markup page it would impossible long. It is just not possible.

My advice, if you want to look up templates, is to try to use Wikipedia:Template messages which, although it looks unfriendly, is actually pretty comprehensive, if you include the navbox and serach function. If you can't find it there the Help desk is again a good option. Don't forget that there is an archive search function in addition. Other ways of getting help are listed at Wikipedia:Requests and Wikipedia:Questions.

Now Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Text formatting is written from a different perspective to wiki markup. Its focus is the article guidelines on text formatting presentation, rather than the actual coding. So I feel a merge would not be good. As for Help:Text formatting it looks like someone started it but didn't really progress. But with a lot of work it could be helpful, but probably be mostly stuff included here.

Anyway, I hope that helps. --Mrjulesd (talk) 19:16, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

I too had similar issues trying to look for the right template specific to the needs I was looking to achieve. Until I stumbled across Wikipedia:Template messages, and found it to be extremely useful. And now I have my own templates toolbox with links to templates that I use most often, including a pipelink to WP:TM - bit of a handy toolbox to have. Perhaps creating such toolbox for oneself with a list of templates you use the most as a quick reference guide, and displayed on your userpage would be a good idea? Plus if others stumble across your userpage and see the toolbox, then it may inspire and/or help them with similar issues? Wes Mouse | ^T@lk 19:36, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

get a grip of reality, get a wyswyg

I find it incredibly disappointing that wikipedia can't see how "wiki markup" is the biggest barrier to inclusiveness on wikipedia. I have much trouble trying to edit wikipedia and still cannot make sense of what I am looking at on an edit page. More often than not I give up and fail to contribute. I complained about this TEN years ago. Without a WHAT YOU SEE IS WHAT YOU GET editor, wikipedia is an exclusive club which favours computer nerds and those who know html. Ordinary people cannot read markup languages and NEVER WILL! The people with the knowledge wikipedia needs are not contributing for a very good and very obvious reason. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.241.100.51 (talk) 04:15, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

If you register and log in, you can enable the VisualEditor, which (I am told) is WYSIWYG to some degree. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:29, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

Green font?

Hey, I've been away from editing Wikipedia for a while and now that I'm back, I'm noticing how frequently people are using green font. I can go into Edit mode to find the Wiki markup but I've searched for an explanation of why this formatting was adopted and what it means. It looks like it is an alternative to a blockquote. But since it is now widely used, it seems like some explanation should be included on this page. Thanks! Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 15:39, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

I think they are probably using the template {{tq}}, e.g. example text. Tip: look at the source of the page, you can usually work out which template they use. --Mrjulesd (talk) 15:45, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

@Liz: That, or {{xt}} which looks like this. These templates both alter the font family (to Georgia, if possible; failing that, 'DejaVu Serif', otherwise the browser's default serif font) and both alter the colour, although slightly differently: {{tq}} uses #008560 which includes a blue component, whereas {{xt}} uses #006400 which is darker but a pure green. Semantically, {{tq}} marks up the text with the class inline-quote-talk whilst {{xt}} marks up the text with two classes example good-example. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:12, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

@Mrjulesd: and @Redrose64:, thanks for the speedy replies. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me that this would be a template instead of Wiki markup but your explanations do answer my question. Why editors are suddenly using it (compared to, say, a year ago), I don't know but {{tq}} seems to have gotten very popular. I find it more difficult to read than italics or using a blockquote but my preferences aren't going to change the way people write! Thanks again for getting back to me, I find the enormous body of Wikipedia templates a little overwhelming to sort through. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 17:34, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

formatting computer program examples

How should I present computer program text written in languages that are not yet supported by the "Syntaxhighlight" plugin?

Help: Wiki markup#Text formatting now suggests using syntaxhighlight tags (<syntaxhighlight lang="JavaScript">...</syntaxhighlight>). Many articles still use the older source tags (<source lang="JavaScript">...</source>).

Alas, several of the languages used in comparison of programming languages (mapping) are not yet supported by that plugin.

(My brief testing shows that "PostScript" and "Pike" seem to work with "syntaxhighlight", even though neither one are on the list of "Supported languages for syntax highlighting" that shows up when I use a language name like "MUMPS" or "SNOBOL" that it *really* doesn't know).

Which of the following approaches is the best way to present source code written in a not-yet-supported language?:

Use syntaxhighlight and specify the particular language now. Later when the syntaxhighlight plugin is updated to support that language, that source code will "look right" with no changes needed to any of the Wikipedia articles that use it. ( <syntaxhighlight lang="MUMPS">...</syntaxhighlight> )
Use syntaxhighlight and specify "lang=Text" for now. ( <syntaxhighlight lang="Text">...</syntaxhighlight> ). If syntaxhighlight is ever updated to support that language, then update every Wikipedia page that has source code in that language to specify that particular language rather than the generic "Text".
use "code" tags now. ( <code>...</code> ). If syntaxhighlight is ever updated to support that language, then update every Wikipedia page that has source code in that language use syntaxhighlight.
indent each line of the program text with spaces
something else?

Which is the best way to show not-yet-supported computer languages? --DavidCary (talk) 04:33, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

The first one is not an option because it will throw an error "Invalid language. You need to specify a language like this: <source lang="html4strict">...</source> Supported languages for syntax highlighting:" and also a collapsed list of valid languages. The fourth has problems because if any part of the code resembles Wiki markup, it will be processed as such.

Personally I use option 3 for short examples of less than one line, or option 2 for multi-line examples. This actually happens quite often, since I hang around WP:VPT and there isn't an option for MediaWiki markup, see e.g. Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 134#Lua. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:49, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

<pre> formatted text does not wrap, thus text may extend past the browser window:

Is there a better wat to illustrate this, other than to extend past the browser window, for me it squeezes the page way to one side pushing the text to near illegibility.--KTo288 (talk) 08:14, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

Onlyinclude in transclusions

If you put <nowiki> <onlyinclude> </onlyinclude> </nowiki>, the onlyinclude tags are displayed literally on the page it was placed on while the text between those tags will be displayed when transcluded. There are two ways to fix this problem: you can either use html encoding (i.e. < can be replaced with < and > with >) or split the text inside the nowiki tags into two parts where the first part has fewer characters than <onlyinclude> and put each part separately inside two pairs of nowiki tags. In the latter case, the first part can be <, <o, <on, <onl, <only, <onlyi, <onlyin, <onlyinc, <onlyincl, <onlyinclu, <onlyinclud, or <onlyinclude and the second part will then begin with onlyinclude>, nlyinclude>, lyinclude>, yinclude>, include>, nclude>, clude>, lude>, ude>, de>, e>, or > respectively. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 15:13, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

March 2016

how should I eddit Karthik yadav vaddarapu (talk) 06:21, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

@Karthik yadav vaddarapu: - If you are asking about Wiki Mark-up, you might want clarify your question. Otherwise, I suggest you try the help desk. - ^theWOLFchild 08:14, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

Mailto Escape

I am looking for a way to link distribution lists internally. For example [All Employees] is a distribution list setup for us to use with Outlook. It uses brackets as an indicator for a distribution list. I would like to add mailto links. When I try to use html code or the nowiki indicators, I always end up with something that is non-functional. Any ideas? -CoolCole 16:52, 13 May 2010 (EST)

I don’t know what you mean by a distribution list in Wiki, but email links work the same as HTTP links. —Frungi (talk) 17:03, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

What he means is that the distribution list doesn't function because the mailing list has a space. It ends up having "mailto:[All" as the link, and Employees] as the text. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.38.59.163 (talk) 22:20, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

http: https

http: is used in all the examples- should this be changed? --ClemRutter (talk) 06:45, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

It depends on the example. For those to Wikimedia sites, probably yes. For others, probably no. --Redrose64 (talk) 08:13, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

Semi/colon

I just added a semicolon and colon to the text describing it, to show examples, and given the following results, I’m guessing said description is incomplete:

A semicolon at the start of a line

is not displayed, but has the effect of rendering the newline.

A colon in such a line is not rendered,

but has the effect of starting a new, indented line.

I really have no idea what a semicolon is supposed to do, but that description is inaccurate. —Frungi (talk) 04:10, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Fixed. A semicolon at the start of a line renders the line in bold. -- œ ^™ 10:09, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

I hadn’t looked at the HTML source before, but a semicolon renders as a <dt> element, and a colon as a <dd> element, which implies they should be used as such:

Term Definition	;Term :Definition

I’m not sure how this should work in Wikipedia articles, or even if it has any relevance whatsoever. I added the semicolon item because I noticed it in use on this page, but should we remove it? —Frungi (talk) 20:07, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Reply

In practice, semicolons are usually used to make a very minor subheading – one that will not appear in the table of contents. With colons used mostly for simple indentation, this means that they are very rarely paired with semicolons, despite the HTML implying that they should be. But we ought to explain to people what the semicolon does so they understand why some subheadings are formatted very differently from the ==usual== heading styles. In effect, the Wikitext semantics have now diverged from the HTML semantics, despite the Wikitext being converted to <dt> and <dd> when rendered. — Richardguk (talk) 02:43, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

I thought subheadings beyond ====a certain level==== stopped appearing in the table of contents. I could have sworn I remembered reading that somewhere. I could be wrong though, as I don’t have time to check right now. And in the interest of accessibility, shouldn’t Wikitext use HTML elements that make semantic sense? The use of <dt> and <dd> don’t. —Frungi (talk) 01:02, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

The level up to which level the table of contents displays subheadings is something you can set, see WP:TOC. There is a MoS reqirement that consecutive headings shouldn't skip levels (so no second-level heading followed by a fourth- or sixth-level heading), see Wikipedia:Manual of Style (layout)#Headings and sections and Wikipedia:Manual of Style (accessibility)#Headings. As the semicolon is used in FA-rated articles for the very purpose of non-displayed sub-headings, I think it shouldn't have been removed from the help page, even if the HTML is strange. --Rontombontom (talk) 09:50, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Agree. Standalone colons should be converted to something like <ul class="no_bullets"> so they will mix with lists created by * and #. Standalone semicolons to e.g. <h6>. 2aprilboy ^talk 16:22, 7 May 2013 (UTC)