Template:Disambiguation/doc

This is the Disambiguation template.

''' Important: Please do not subst: this template. '''

This is a general-purpose template, to be placed at the bottom of any article that exists to help readers find other articles with the same or similar names. This concept is called disambiguation and is used with many common words, such as cross, life and work. This template automatically adds articles to the Category:Disambiguation pages.

Page title fixes
This template will automatically detect incomplete disambiguation present in page titles. If the title includes anything other than (disambiguation) in parentheses, it is assumed to be the article type. For example, this template on the page 1st Division (France) would produce the text "This disambiguation page lists France articles associated with the title 1st Division". If the page titles contains parentheses that are not used for disambiguation (such as Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask)), set yes. If you wish to manually specify the article type, use the type parameter.

Disambiguation
For disambiguation pages requiring cleanup, use Disambiguation cleanup.

More specific and alternative templates exist for disambiguation pages whose entries are limited exclusively to items of a particular type:
 * Airport disambiguation for airports – Category:Airport disambiguation
 * Biology disambiguation – Category:Biology disambiguation pages
 * Call sign disambiguation – Category:Broadcast call sign disambiguation pages
 * Caselaw disambiguation – Category:Case law disambiguation pages
 * Chinese title disambiguation – Category:Disambiguation pages with Chinese character titles
 * Genus disambiguation – Category:Genus disambiguation pages
 * Geodis for place names – Category:Place name disambiguation pages
 * Hndis for people's names – Category:Human name disambiguation pages
 * Hndis-cleanup
 * Hospital disambiguation for hospitals or medical centers – Category:Hospital disambiguation pages
 * Letter disambiguation – adds a Latin letter navbox, does not auto-categorize
 * Letter-NumberCombDisambig – Category:Letter-number combination disambiguation pages
 * Mathematical disambiguation for mathematics titles – Category:Mathematics disambiguation pages
 * Mil-unit-dis – Category:Military units and formations disambiguation pages
 * Numberdis for numbers – Category:Lists of ambiguous numbers
 * Phonetics disambiguation – Category:Linguistics disambiguation pages
 * Road disambiguation for roads – Category:Road disambiguation pages
 * School disambiguation for educational institutions – Category:Educational institution disambiguation pages
 * Species Latin name disambiguation – Category:Latin name disambiguation pages
 * Wikipedia disambiguation for ambiguous titles and shortcuts in the Wikipedia namespace – Category:Wikipedia disambiguation pages

Note: A set index article (SIA) is not a disambiguation page; it is a list article about a set of items of a specific type that also share the same (or similar) name. Set index articles includes templates for SIAs.

Parameters
Sometimes there isn't a specific disambiguation template (see list above) that fits for a page, or the page has items in more than one of the above classes. Then use Disambiguation but with one or more parameters telling which categories to use. Up to ten parameters can be fed, and in any order, for example:



Only add a parameter from this list if the disambiguation page has several items of that type:
 * : for Category:Human name disambiguation pages (note that you must instead add the category separately if it needs a different sort key)
 * : for Category:Church building disambiguation pages
 * : for Category:County name disambiguation pages
 * : for Category:United States county disambiguation pages
 * : for Category:Fish common name disambiguation pages
 * : for Category:Genus disambiguation pages
 * : for Category:Place name disambiguation pages
 * : for Category:Hospital disambiguation pages
 * : for Category:Latin name disambiguation pages
 * : for Category:Letter-number combination disambiguation pages
 * : for Category:Mathematical disambiguation
 * : for Category:Lists of ambiguous numbers
 * : for Category:Plant common name disambiguation pages
 * : for Category:Political party disambiguation pages
 * : for Category:Road disambiguation pages
 * : for Category:Educational institution disambiguation pages
 * : for Category:Ship disambiguation pages
 * : for Category:Township name disambiguation pages

These can be added if there are one or more elements in the list (per their category descriptions):
 * : for Category:Airport disambiguation
 * : for Category:Broadcast call sign disambiguation pages

These can be added even if there's only one element in the list, since these types are not actually ambiguous:


 * : Category:Disambiguation pages with given-name-holder lists
 * : for Category:Disambiguation pages with surname-holder lists

This parameter reflects the title, not the contents:


 * : for Category:Disambiguation pages with Chinese character titles

And this parameter reflects a maintenance need, not the contents:


 * : for Category:Disambiguation pages in need of being split

Note that Disambiguation might not have parameters for all subcategories of Category:Disambiguation pages, then you have to manually add the category to the disambig page.

Nocat
If categorization is not needed on pages that are not in mainspace, then the "nocat" parameter may be set equal to "true" or "yes" as follows:

Redirects
The following redirect to this template:


 * Disambig
 * Dab
 * DAB
 * Disamb

Technical details
Internally, this template uses Dmbox. That template categorises pages into Category:All disambiguation pages and Category:All article disambiguation pages.

This template also uses Disambiguation/cat to handle the categorisation parameters, such as "hospital" and "school".

Template use
Place template at the foot of the disambiguation page after all of the disambiguation content but before any categories (see below) or interlanguage links, as per the WP:DCAT guideline.