Wikitext cheatsheet

The Stylecards website runs on MediaWiki, which is the same software used in running Wikipedia. When creating or editing pages in MediaWiki, understanding how to use wikitext is a good idea.

Wikitext is a way of formatting text on a wiki, hence the name. There are two ways of creating wikitext; one is to manually type in the characters, and the other is to use the toolbar in the MediaWiki editor. The instructions below are for those who are typing manually, but everything described can also be done using the toolbar. Stylecards encourages its web editors to experiment with both methods before deciding which works best for them.

Formatting

To create italic text, use two apostrophes (') before and after the words to be italicized.

To create bold text, use three apostrophes (') before and after the words to be bolded.

To create bold italic text, use five apostrophes (') before and after the words to be bolded and italicized.

Be sure to read the Stylecards style guide to get a better idea about when bold text and italic text should be used.

Links

In MediaWiki, there are two types of links: internal and external.

Internal links will create a link to another page on this website. If the page exists, the text will turn blue, but if the page doesn't exist, the text will turn red. The long-term goal of the Stylecards website is to have many blue links and very few red ones.

External links will create a link to a different website. All external links will be blue, as the MediaWiki software doesn't know whether the pages being linked exist or not.