TextFormattingRules

Table of Contents toctoggle

Synopsis

Emphasis: // for italics, ** for bold, **//...//** for both, ## for fixed width.
Lists: * for bullet lists, # for numbered lists; use multiple * or # for nested lists.
Headings: "==", "===", "====", etc. make headings.
Preformatted text: Enclose text in {{{...}}} or <pre></pre>.
Indented text: Indent the paragraph with whitespaces.
References: use double square brackets for a [[page link]] or URL [[http://cool.wiki.int/]].
References: use pipe | to name the links: [[page link|some text]] or [[http://cool.wiki.int/|some text]].
Preventing linking: Prefix with "~": ~DoNotHyperlink.
Misc: "\\" makes a linebreak, "----" makes a horizontal rule.
Allowed HTML tags: b big i small tt em strong s ~~strike~~ abbr acronym cite code dfn kbd samp var ^sup _sub
More: tables, images, table of contents, plugins

More explanations: Help:TextFormattingRules

Character Formatting

Emphasis

Use a double slash (//) for emphasis (usually italics)
Use a double asterisk (**) for strong emphasis (usually bold)
Mix them at will: bold italics
Emphasis can be used multiple times within a paragraph, but cannot cross paragraph boundaries:

// this

will not work//

Monospace

Monospace text is made using two hashes:

This sentence contains ##monospace text##.

This sentence contains monospace text.

Superscript

Superscript text is made using two carets:

The XX^^th^^ century.

The XX^th century.

Subscript

Subscript text is made using two commas:

Water is H,,2,,O.

Water is H₂O.

Fonts

There's no syntax for font tags.

Color Text

Is it possible to write text in color.

%color=green% green text %% and back to normal

will give:
green text and back to normal

The easiest way to do it is to use the COLOR button in the Edit Toolbar. The text will be in green by default. You can then change the color.

Allowed colors are:

an HTML color number (# followed by 3 or 6 digits),
the following predefined color names:

aqua	beige	black	blue	brown	chocolate	cyan	fuchsia	gold	gray
green	ivory	indigo	lime	magenta	maroon	navy	olive	orange	pink
purple	red	salmon	silver	snow	teal	turquoise	violet	white	yellow

Note: you can put the headers in color, but only if you do not have a table of content. For now, the table of content is incompatible with color headers.

Escape Character

The tilde '~' is the Escape Character:

A single tilde '~' followed by nothing gets rendered as a single tilde. => ~
Two tilde '~~' get rendered as a single tilde. => ~
A single tilde before a link ('~http://foo.bar') prevents linking. => http://foo.bar
Two tildes before a link ('~~http://foo.bar') produce a tilde followed by the hyperlinked URL. => ~http://foo.bar
A tilde inside an URL gets removed, unless it's formatted inside square brackets.
Two tildes inside an URL (without brackets) become a single tilde. => http://foo.bar/~user or http://foo.bar/~user

Special Characters

All special non-whitespace HTML characters are displayed as-is. Exceptions below.

Special non-ASCII or non-latin characters are printed as-is only if supported by the native wiki CHARSET. Add such characters on a non-supported CHARSET with the Help:RawHtmlPlugin if it is enabled by the Admin and e.g. the &#num; syntax.

E.g. These Japanese chars 'から新規ページ' on this utf-8 wiki.

And with the plugin:

Plugin RawHtml disabled. Raw HTML is only allowed in locked pages.

<?plugin RawHtml &#12363;&#12425; &#26032;&#35215;&#12506;&#12540;&#12472; ?>

And this is how it should look:

Paragraphs

Don't indent paragraphs
Words wrap and fill as needed
Use blank lines as separators
Four or more minus signs make a horizontal rule
"\\", "%%%" or "<br>" makes a linebreak (in headings and lists too)

Lists

Unordered lists

Recommended syntax (Wikicreole):

asterisk for first level
double asterisk for second level, etc.

Be sure to put a space after the asterisk.

You can also use indented asterisk for second level (indent at least two spaces).

Ordered lists

Recommended syntax (Wikicreole):

# for first level
double # for second level, etc.

Be sure to put a space after the hash sign.

You can also use indented # for second level (indent at least two spaces).

Definition lists

Term:
  definition

gives

Term: definition

Remark

Items may contain multiple paragraphs and other multi-lined content, just indent the items

Headings

Wikicreole syntax (recommended)

'==' at the start of a line makes a large heading (h2)
'===' at the start of a line makes a medium heading (h3)
'====' at the start of a line makes a small heading (h4)
'=====' at the start of a line makes a smaller heading (h5)
'======' at the start of a line makes a tiny heading (h6)

Classic Phpwiki syntax

'!!!' at the start of a line makes a large heading (h2)
'!!' at the start of a line makes a medium heading (h3)
'!' at the start of a line makes a small heading (h4)

Preformatted text

Place the preformatted text between three opening curly brackets and three closing curly brackets:

{{{
Preformatted text. ~WikiLinks do not work.
}}}

gives

Preformatted text. WikiLinks do not work.

If you want Wiki interaction, place preformatted lines inside <pre>:

<pre>
Preformatted text. WikiLinks still work.
</pre>

gives

Preformatted text. WikiLinks still work.

Indented Paragraphs

Two or more whitespaces signal indented text. Indents may be nested.

This is an indented block of text.

This block is even more indented.

E-mail style block-quoting is supported as well:

> This is block-quoted text.

renders as

This is block-quoted text.

References

Hyperlinks to other pages within the Wiki are made by placing the page name in double square brackets: this is a page link. Single brackets or WikiWords will also work.
Hyperlinks to external pages are done like this: http://www.wcsb.org/
You can name the links by providing a name, a pipe (|) and then the hyperlink or pagename: PhpWiki home page, the front page
You can suppress linking to URIs by preceding the word with a '~', e.g. NotLinkedAsWikiName, http://not.linked.to/
Also, the old way of linking URL's is still supported: precede URLs with "http:", "ftp:" or "mailto:" to create links automatically as in: http://c2.com/
URLs ending with .png, .gif, or .jpg are inlined if in square brackets, by themselves:
In-page hyperlinks are made by placing a named anchor and referring to the anchor in a hyperlink:
- Named anchors:
  - #[[foo]]: An anchor around the text "foo" with id "foo".
  - #[[|foo]]: An empty anchor with id "foo".
  - #[[howdy|foo]]: An anchor around the text "howdy" with id "foo".
- References to name anchors are made thusly:
  [[#hyperlinks]], [[OtherPage#foo]], [[OtherPage#foo|named]].
Semantic links are named links like: is_a :: WikiPage and attributes like size:-4000.
A pagelink within square brackets starting with ":" is not backlinked.

Images

An inline image is created with curly brackets. An alternate text can be put after a pipe. If there is none, an empty alternate text will be created.

{{myimage.png}}
{{myimage.png|this is the alt text for my image}}
[[some link|{{myimage.png}}]] - if you click on the image, will goto "some link"
[[some link|{{myimage.png|alt text}}]] - same with alternative
[[http://example.com/|{{myimage.png}}]] - same as above: picture links to url
[[http://example.com/|{{myimage.png|alt text}}]] - same with alternative

Tables

Wikicreole tables

All cells are separated by single pipes. Leading spaces are permitted before the first cell of a row and trailing spaces are permitted at the end of a line. The ending pipe is optional.

You can embed links, bold, italics, line breaks, and nowiki in table cells.

Equal sign directly following pipe defines a header. Headers can be arranged horizontally or vertically.

|=Heading Col 1 |=Heading Col 2         |
|Cell 1.1       |Two lines\\in Cell 1.2 |
|Cell 2.1       |Cell 2.2               |

will give:

Heading Col 1	Heading Col 2
Cell 1.1	Two lines in Cell 1.2
Cell 2.1	Cell 2.2

Mediawiki tables

See Help:MediawikiTablePlugin.

Definition list style tables

Definition list style tables are written just like definition lists, except that you replace the trailing colon on the term with a "pipe" (|).

Term 1 |
   Definition 1 begins here.
   Term 1.1 |
      Definition 1.1
   Term 1.2 |
      Definition 1.2
   This is part of definition 1.
Term 2 |
   Here's definition 2.

will give:

Term 1	Definition 1 begins here.
	Term 1.1	Definition 1.1
	Term 1.2	Definition 1.2
	This is part of definition 1.
Term 2	Here's definition 2.

HTML Mark-Up Language

Some in-line markup is allowed through the use of HTML tags: b, big, i, small, tt, em, strong, abbr, acronym, cite, code, dfn, kbd, samp, var, ^sup and _sub
< and > are themselves
The & characters will not work