Help:Funtoo Editing Guidelines/Basics

Paragraphs

To create a new paragraph, insert a blank line between two lines of text. If a blank line doesn't exist between two lines of wikitext, they will be combined into a single flowing paragraph.

   Warning

If you leave leading whitespace at the beginning of a line, MediaWiki will render it as pre-formatted text. Beware of this. See below for more info.

Here's an example of how whitespace at the beginning of text (in this case, just a single space) will force mediawiki to render text as pre-formatted. This can be handy when you want it, and a pain when you don't want it -- so be aware of this feature!

   example wikitext

 This is supposed to be standard wikitext but is rendering as monospace instead!
^
\
 there is an extra space here!

This will render in monospaced text as follows:

This is supposed to be standard wikitext but is rendering as monospace instead!

Template Parameters

Templates are MediaWiki's versions of "macros" or functions, and typically look like this in wikitext:

   example wikitext for template call

{{c|foobar}}

Above, we are calling the Template:C template and specifying its first parameter to be the string foobar. Another way to specify the first parameter is using the 1| convention, as follows, which does the same thing as the previous template call:

   example wikitext for template call, now with 1|

{{c|1=foobar}}

It is a common error for new wiki contributors to leave extra whitespace after the | character when specifying a parameter to a template, particularly when they are using {{note}} or similar templates. This will cause the first parameter to render as monospace, which is not generally what you want! So, instead of getting a proper tip like this:

   example wikitext of correctly-written tip

{{tip|This is an example tip!}}

   Tip

This is an example tip!

You will instead get the following:

   Tip

This is a broken tip in monospace because I have a leading space after |!

Here is the wikitext that produced the rendering error. Can you see the problem?

   example wikitext of 'broken' tip

{{tip| This is a broken tip because I have a leading space after {{!}}!}}