Help:Welcome/1

Formatting

Formatting a Scratch Wiki article is a bit different from writing on a standard word processor. Instead of a strict WYSIWYG approach ("What You See Is What You Get"), the Scratch Wiki uses text codes to create particular elements of the page (e.g., headings). This markup language is known as Wikitext (or Wiki-markup) and is designed for ease of editing.

Bold and italics
The most commonly used wiki tags are bold and italics. Bolding and italicizing are done by surrounding a word or phrase with multiple apostrophes ('):

On Wikipedia, the names of an article's subject are written in bold when they are first mentioned in the article. For example, the article Stack Block begins:


 * A Stack block is a rectangular block that is shaped to fit above and below other blocks. Stack blocks make up the majority of the blocks available in Scratch, being available in every category except Operators...

Italics may be used for the names of books, movies, albums, and computer/video game titles. If the first mention of the subject of an article is also a book or movie title, then bold italic is used.

Headings and subheadings
Headings and subheadings are a way to improve the organization of an article. If you can see two or more distinct topics being discussed, with more than a couple paragraphs for each, you can make the article more readable by inserting a heading for each topic - that is, making each into its own section.

Headings are created like this:

{| class="wikitable" ! You see ! width="75%" | You get
 *  ==Elizabeth II hats== 
 *  ==Elizabeth II hats== 

Elizabeth II hats

 *  ===Straw hats=== 
 *  ===Straw hats=== 



Straw hats

 * }

If an article has at least four headings, a table of contents will automatically be generated. Try creating a heading in the sandbox. It will be added automatically to the table of contents for the page, assuming three others already exist. You can also make a table of contents appear by writing, however it is not recommended.

HTML
Wikitext contains all the features required to follow the Scratch Wiki's formatting conventions and knowledge of HTML code is not necessary, although it is often used for more specific formatting such as using colors, text and paragraph styles, and page layout.

Test what you have learned in the sandbox, and see Help:Formatting or the Cheatsheet for more information about formatting.

← Previous: Editing tutorial Next: Linking tutorial→