User:Mini-mitch/Sandbox Three/Headings

An article's sectional headings are best created through the wiki code markup involving the use of the equal symbol (=). Use of proper wiki syntax for headings is preferred over trying to create headings manually through the use of emboldened text. "Proper" wiki syntax follows this format:



The results of this are hard to show here without actually creating a subhead for this article. Because of this, we direct your attention to our headline test page for a more thorough overview of the coding. For now, suffice to say that there are six levels of sectioning available, each denoted by an increasing number of "equal" symbols (=). Note that immediately surrounding the text of your section header with spaces is extremely helpful to wiki maintenance. Thus: === Hello === is preferred over ===Hello===

The first level, using just one equal symbol

should never be used. It actually represents the level of the article title itself. It produces a header which is as big as the article title, it does not produce a sectional "edit" button, and it cannot be linked to.

Benefits of using proper headings
By using proper wiki coding for sections, we gain a number of benefits over "creating" false subheads through text bolding:
 * If your article has a minimum of four section headings, a table of contents is automatically generated.
 * Sections can be automatically numbered for users with that preference set in "My preferences".
 * Most properly created section headlines produce an "edit section" button, allowing for just that section to be edited.
 * Words within properly marked headings are given greater weight in searches.
 * Sub-sections of the article get progressively smaller headings. This visual consistency allows the reader to "know where they are" within the article just by the size of the font. It also allows the reader to know how the section they're reading relates to other sections.

Linking by heading

 * ''This section describes how to link to a specific section of an article from another article. You may be interested in how to link to a section of the same article.

Section headings allow for linkage directly to a specific part of an article.

For example, this syntax will allow you to link directly to this section of this article: Note, however, that this is not the same as:. However, both will produce blue-links, and therefore appear to be valid links.

It's vital to capitalise the subhead precisely as it is in the article.

Additionally, the article in question must be the root article name. In other words, linking to sections through a redirect won't work. For example, if you wanted to link to the synopsis on the page The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve, you have to type. Even though The Massacre is by far the more common name of the story, and a valid redirect exists there, the following just won't work:.

Sentence case
Capitalise the first letter only of the first word and of any proper nouns in a heading, and leave all of the other letters in lower case. This style is called "sentence case" and it is the stylistic preference of this wiki. You may, however, wonder why it matters to use sentence case if the headers are in uppercase.

Well, there are many reasons. The main reason is because the uppercase headers that now appear on the site are the result of a single command in the CSS code. In other words, the headers aren't actually in upper case; they're merely styled in uppercase. Should we wish to "re-style" the wiki, it'll be important that the headers be typed by you in proper sentence case.

Another good reason is because of the sectional linking discussed above. Sectional linking is case-sensitive, so editors should be able to count upon the fact that headers are in sentence case so that they can reliably link to sections.

Therefore the following examples should be kept in mind:

Other matters

 * Avoid links within headings.
 * Avoid overuse of sub-headings.
 * Section headings should be succinct
 * Section headings should simply describe the contents of the section. Imaginative wording or puns aren't disallowed, but they might be edited to something less "creative" unless their meaning is very clear.