Biographies are wiki, which means that they can be easily edited.
Editing text doesn't require any special knowledge. It's all very easy. Most common formatting such as italics, bold, underline, and headlines, is available through the toolbar at the top of the editing box.
The toolbar is just a short-cut for creating what is called "wiki mark-up" or wikitext.
Here are tips on doing the wikitext formatting by hand. Also see the separate pages on adding links, sources, and footnotes. There is also a page with ideas for what to include in a bio.
Contents |
To create a heading place two equal signs == before and after the text you want as a heading.
For example, the heading above was created by typing: ==Creating Headings==
Placing three or four = signs before and after the text will produce smaller and smaller sub-headings.
When you have four or more headings a Table Of Contents is automatically created at the top of the page listing each heading.
This is useful for denoting, for example, the text of a birth, death or marriage notice. To start italics preceed the first word with two ' symbols and another two ' after the final word.
For example, typing ''this is italicized'' will produce this is italicized.
Note that this is two apostrophes, not a quotation mark.
To have a word in bold you would would preceed the text with three ' symbols and three at the end.
For example, '''this is bold text''' will produce this is bold text.
You can combine both bold and italics by using five ' symbols before and after the desired text.
For example, '''''this is bold and italic text''''' will produce this is bold and italic text.
In wiki mark-up, one line break (i.e. clicking Enter/Return) will be ignored in the output. Two line breaks will create a new paragraph (i.e. two line breaks).
To create a single line break, you can enter <br /> at the end of the line.
You can break up the page into sections with a horizontal rule. Just type four minus (-) signs on a line by themselves.
For example, ---- will produce the horizontal line below this text.
To indent a line, start the line with a colon (:)
For example,
:one indent
:one indent again
::two indents
:::three indents
will produce
Starting each line with a single asterisk (*) will produce a bulleted list.
For example,
*first line
*second line
*third line
will produce
The list ends when you don't start a line with an asterisk.
Starting each line with a single pound/number symbol (#) will produce a numbered list, for example,
#Item One
#Item Two
#Item Three
will produce
To create nested lists, add additional asterisks or pound signs.
*first line
**second line
**third line
*fourth line
will produce
To create tables, separate each column with a pipe (|) and each row by a pipedash (|-), inside open and close brackets {| |}. border="0" (invisible) is the default.
{| border="1"
|+ The table's caption
|-
|column1
|column2
|column3
|}
will produce
| column1 | column2 | column3 |
Many online editing references exist for major Wiki markup help, with extremely detailed information about all Wiki options and styles, i.e.
Here is an example of an ancestor profile created by Paul Bech: William Oxley.
You will see the Biography section uses italics to quote sections from letters Oxley wrote.
Paul also created a Timeline section to clarify the order of events in Oxeley's life.
There is also a section for Newspaper articles that mention him.
Finally, there is a Sources section, something every profile should include.
See more tips on adding links, sources, and footnotes.
This page was last modified 02:13, 20 April 2013. This page has been accessed 2,974 times.