Help:Quick guide to editing
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Contents |
This page gives you the basics of editing and formatting an article. For more advanced style guidelines, see our visual style guide and textual style guide.
Appearance
Bold and italics
The most commonly used wiki tags are bold and italics. Bolding and italicizing are done by surrounding a word or phrase with multiple apostrophes ('):
- If you type ''2 for italics'', you'll see this: 2 for italics
- If you type '''3 for bold''', you'll see this: 3 for bold
- If you type '''''5 for bold italic''''', you'll see this: 5 for bold italic
On Ballotpedia, the first mention of an article's subject is written in bold. For example, the article on Arnold Schwarzenegger begins:
- Arnold Schwarzenegger was first elected as Governor of California in the 2003 recall elections and won re-election in 2006.
Headings and subheadings
Headings and subheadings are an easy way to improve the organization of an article. If you can see two or more distinct topics being discussed, you can break up the article by inserting a heading for each section. If an article has at least four headings, a table of contents will be added automatically. Headings are created like this:
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== Heading == | → |
Heading |
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=== Subheading === | → |
Subheading |
Indenting
Indenting improves the readability of a discussion. Each reply should be one level deeper than the first statement.
Plain indentations
The simplest way of indenting is to place a colon (:) at the beginning of a line. The more colons, the more indentation. A new line (pressing Enter or Return) ends the indented paragraph.
Example:
| Shown:
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Bullet points
You can also indent using bullets for lists. To insert a bullet, use an asterisk (*). Similar to indentation, more asterisks means more indentation.
Example:
| Shown:
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Numbered items
You can also create numbered lists using the number sign (#). Again, you can affect the indent of the number by the number of #s you use.
Example:
| Shown:
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Other project pages
In addition to Talk pages, we use a few other pages to talk with each other. These different areas are often referred to as namespaces — as in, "the Talk namespace". Pages in the Ballotpedia namespace (like this one!) provide information about Ballotpedia and how to use it.
Content written in a Template page will be displayed in articles that contain the template reference. For example, the content written in Template:Protected will appear in any article that contains the {{protected}} tag.
Links
Links are important, but too many links can be distracting. Therefore, only link the first occurrence of a word. A red link goes to a page that doesn't exist yet. When you find a red link, you can start the article with something as simple as a single sentence. We can return and add information later.
Links between Ballotpedia articles
Links between Ballotpedia articles are easy to create, give users access to related information, and greatly add to Ballotpedia's utility. To link to another Ballotpedia page (called a wiki link), put it in [[ ]] brackets, like this:
- [[Ballotpedia]] = Ballotpedia
To link to an article but display a different name for the link, add the pipe "|" divider followed by the alternative name. For example:
- [[Ballotpedia|This link goes to the Ballotpedia page]] = This link goes to the Ballotpedia page
Links between wikis
Interwiki links allow links to be placed amongst separate projects, set apart from other links by their light blue color. This is possible between Sunshine Review, Ballotpedia, and Judgepedia. To create one, simply add the namespace before the page title.
Example:
- [[Sunshinereview:Cook County, Illinois|Cook County, Illinois]] → Cook County, Illinois
- [[Judgepedia:Supreme Court of the United States]] → Supreme Court of the United States
Links outside Ballotpedia
- [http://www.google.com Here's the title for the link] = Here's the title for the link
Sometimes you'll want to add a citation inside the article text.
- At the place you want to add the citation, add ref tags around your source (e.g. <ref>YOUR SOURCE</ref>). A small link like this one [1] will appear next to your text, taking you to the reference section at the bottom of the page.
- Second, copy the following text to the bottom of your page if it isn't there already. This tells the page where to add your citations:
- ==References==
- <references/>
Categories
We place articles in categories with others in a related topic. Just type [[Category:]] at the bottom of the page and put the name of the category between the colon and the brackets. For example: [[Category:State ballot measures]]
Every article should have a category, and it's very important to use the correct categories so others can easily find your work. The best way to find the proper categories is to look at articles on similar subjects and check which categories they use.
See also
Portions of this article were adapted from Wikipedia.
