<span class="SFPTagline"> From SCIFIPEDIA </span>

Most formatting is usually done with Wiki markup, so people don't have to learn HTML.

Contents 1 Wiki markup 1.1 Bold and italics 1.2 Headings and subheadings 1.3 Indenting 2 SCIFIPEDIA formatting style 3 Templates

Wiki markup

Writing for SCIFIPEDIA articles is a bit different from writing on a standard word processor. Instead of a strict "what you see is what you get" approach (also known as WYSIWYG), wiki uses simple text codes for formatting. The approach is similar to that used in writing HTML for web pages, but the codes are simpler.

The wiki can accept some HTML tags directly, but most people use the built-in MediaWiki markup language, which is designed for ease of editing.

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 ('):

• ''italics'' appears as italics. (2 apostrophes on both sides)
• '''bold''' appears as bold. (3 apostrophes on both sides)
• '''''bolded italics''''' appears as bolded italics. (5 apostrophes on both sides)

Note: You can type multiple quote characters by surrounding them in <pre> or <nowiki> tags.

It is a SCIFIPEDIA convention to bold the subject of an article when it is first mentioned in the article. For example, the article John T. Sladek starts:

John T. Sladek (1937-2000) was a satirical science fiction writer.

Another SCIFIPEDIA convention is to italicize book, movie and computer/video game titles. If the first mention of the subject of an article is also a book or movie title then bold italics is used. For example, the article New Maps of Hell starts:

New Maps of Hell, by Kingsley Amis (1922-1995), may have been the first serious academic study of science fiction.

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.

Headings can be created like this:

• ==Top level heading== (2 equals signs)
• ===Subheading=== (3 equals signs)
• ====Another level down==== (4 equals signs)

If an article has at least four headings, a table of contents will automatically be generated.

Indenting

Indentation on SCIFIPEDIA is used primarily on talk pages, so see Chapter 5 of this Tutorial for instructions on indenting text.

SCIFIPEDIA formatting style

You can get some ideas about standard SCIFIPEDIA formatting style by looking at an Article, particularly if you select a complicated one, in Edit mode.

Templates

Templates enable quick formatting of articles. Among the most commonly used is the {{spoilers}} template. Other commonly used templates are those that allow readers to see a quick listing of information about television series, movies, and novels. For a listing of these templates see: Templates

To include a basic template in an article you will need to know the template's title and simply place it inside curly brackets

eg. {{Template name}}

More complex templates allow a user to fill in specific information. This is typical of templates about movies, television series, and novels. For an example of how to use these templates see: Help:Tutorial/Creating an article about a novel

Continue with the tutorial.