Wikipǣdia:Tutorial (Wikipedia links)

Frontpage, 1: Editing, 2: Formatting, 3: Wikipedia links, 4: Related site links, 5: External links, 6: Talk pages, 7: Keep in mind, 8: Registration, 9: Namespaces, 10: Wrap-up

Internal links

One of the things that makes Wikipedia useful and addictive is extensive cross-listing by internal links. These easily-created links allow users to access information related to the article they're reading.

When to link

The easiest way to learn when to link is to look at Wikipedia articles for examples. If you're trying to decide whether to make a link or not, think "If I were reading this article, would the link be useful to me?"

How to link

When you want to make a link to another Wikipedia page (called a wiki link) you have to put it in double square brackets, like this:

[[Article X]]

For example, if you want to make a link to, say, the Wikipedia:Contributing to Wikipedia page, it would be:

[[Wikipedia:Contributing to Wikipedia]]

Also remember that in wikipedia the links are created automatically, so if you put double square brackets around a word, it becomes a link, and because of that you have to be careful about disambiguation.

If you want the link to the article to show text other than the article title, you can add an alternative name by adding after the pipe "|" divider (SHIFT + BACKSLASH on most keyboards).

For example, if you wanted to make a link to the above example, but wanted it to say "my text" you would write it as such:

To view the article, [[Article X|my text]]...

It would appear as:

To view the article, my text...

but would link to "Article X".

Alternate endings

When you want to use the plural of an article title (or add any other suffix) for your link, you can add the extra letters directly outside the double square brackets.

For example, you would write:

Marine mammals such as [[dolphin]]s....

Intercontinental [[ship]]ping...

It would appear as:

Marine mammals such as dolphins....

Intercontinental shipping...

Linking dates

Linking dates may not seem useful; however, please do link dates since it enables the use of a user preference in how dates are displayed. An unlinked date, like July 13, 2004, will always be displayed in that manner. If you link the date:

[[July 13]], [[2004]]

Wikipedia will display it in one of the following ways:

July 13, 2004

13 July 2004

2004 July 13

2004-07-13

according to the preference set by the individual user. (This feature is only available to logged-in users. It only works if the date is linked.)

Experiment

Try it! Here's the sandbox for this page.

Continue with the tutorial.