Help:Source editor

The key to learning the Source Editor is learning the code used to format articles. This "wikitext" is just like regular writing, but it also includes special characters to create headings, italics, bolding, indented lists, etc.

First acquaint yourself with wikitext

 * 1) Find a page with some interesting formatting.
 * 2) Click on the "Edit source" or "View source" tab at the top of the window to show the wikitext for that page.
 * 3) Look at the wikitext responsible for creating the page. This may help you learn how to edit since the "code" is, in large part, pretty intuitive and easy to learn if you look back and forth between the article and the code responsible for it.

Learn the most important wikitext formatting
Here are the basics you may need to know:

{| class="wikitable" ! Description ! What you type ! What you see
 * Italic text
 * italic text
 * italic text
 * Bold text
 * bold text
 * bold text
 * Bulleted list
 * * Item 1
 * Item 2
 * Item 3
 * Item 1
 * Item 2
 * Item 3
 * Numbered list
 * # Electrolytes
 * 1) Cytokines
 * 2) Cytokine subgroups
 * 3) Cytokine sub-sub-groups
 * 4) Bananas
 * 5) Electrolytes
 * 6) Cytokines
 * 7) Cytokine subgroups
 * 8) Cytokine sub-sub-groups
 * 9) Bananas
 * Indented text
 * : cytokines
 * interleukins
 * IL-6
 * leukocytes
 * 1) Bananas
 * Indented text
 * : cytokines
 * interleukins
 * IL-6
 * leukocytes
 * leukocytes


 * cytokines
 * interleukins
 * IL-6
 * leukocytes
 * leukocytes


 * Block quotes
 * "this paragraph will be indented"
 * "this paragraph will be indented"
 * Headings of different levels
 * ==Section Heading==
 * Headings of different levels
 * ==Section Heading==

Sub-sub-section Heading

 * (not illustrated)
 * Link to another MEpedia page (internal link)
 * The MEpedia page on the PACE trial
 * The MEpedia page on the PACE trial
 * Link to a different website (external link)
 * The Wikipedia page for mitochondrion
 * The Wikipedia page for mitochondrion
 * }
 * The Wikipedia page for mitochondrion
 * }

How to use links
As shown in the above table, internal links are treated differently from external links:
 * Internal links use double brackets  while external links use single brackets.
 * To give an internal link a visible name, use a pipe character “|” to separate the link from the name:
 * To give an external link a visible name, use a space to separate the link from the name:

Note: A link to a category page must start with a colon ":", for example. If you forget the initial colon, your page will be added to that category instead!

A visual introduction
You will notice on the site that there are often superscript numbers in the text. When you click on them, they take you to the References section on the page, and a citation.



To add a reference, you will need two things: a web link for your source (academic sources are preferable, but a blog post or video is okay too) and the code to create the reference.

Here is a sample of what a reference looks like in the text. You can see the two sections of code, one before the web link, and one after.



The two pieces of code are:

(which goes at the end).

It is important to make sure that you include both pieces of code (yes, you're a coder now!), and note the direction of the "/" in the code that comes after the web link.

Simple References
To add a simple reference to a statement, use the

...

References

Which, when added to a page, is displayed like this in the References sections (the PACE trial is shown as an example):

Note the following about full references:
 * The "authorlink" fields specify the name of the MEpedia article to go to when that author is clicked. See MEpedia:Author links for more information.
 * The PMID number is the PubMed study ID.
 * The DOI is the unique reference for the study, and when provided means the citation will include a link to the study, wherever it is published.
 * All fields are mandatory, except for 'display-authors', which should only be included if you wish to hide some of the author's names.

For more information on this “Citation” template tag, see Wikipedia’s Citation Template tag.

For the most commonly used citations, you can copy-and-paste them from MEpedia:Commonly used citations.

To help you insert these “Citation” template tags, here is a blank template to copy-and-paste into pages:

How to use template tags
A ‘Template Tag’ is just a way to add a note to a page or to a statement.

To insert a template tag:
 * Type the name of the template tag inside double braces. For example,   or   or.
 * If you are inserting a "Cleanup" template tag, include the reason for the "Cleanup" template tag as well as the current date. For example:

For more information on template tags, see MEpedia:Templates.

How to use categories
To change the categories that a page belongs to: Note: If you want to link to a category without accidentally adding the category to the page, begin the link with a colon, such as
 * 1) Scroll down to the end of the page, where the categories are listed.
 * 2) To add a new category, add  to the end of the page, where   is the name of the category you're adding.
 * 3) Be sure to remove any inappropriate categories listed.

How to add an image
To add an image: Example:
 * 1) Simply add a link to the File page for the image.
 * 2) Inside the link, you can specify if the image is right-aligned or left-aligned.
 * 3) Inside the link, you can also specify a width (with a px suffix) to set the size.

See also: HELP:IMAGE

How to add a video
Videos that have been uploaded to MEpedia are linked to in the same way as images:



Videos can also be displayed from YouTube, Vimeo and other common websites.

See also: HELP:VIDEO

Learn more

 * View a video tutorial
 * Wikipedia's wikitext cheatsheet
 * Mediawiki's wikitext help