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A page can and should be divided into sections, using the section heading syntax. For each page with more than three section headings, a table of contents (TOC) is automatically generated.
Sections are created by creating their headings, as below.
==Section== ===Subsection=== ====Sub-subsection====
Please do not use only one equals sign on a side (=Heading=). This would cause a section heading to be as large as the page's name (title).
For registered users who use the preference setting Auto-number headings, sections are numbered in the table of contents and at beginning of each section heading.
Headings of sections (including subsections) should be unique on a page. Using the same heading more than once on a page causes problems:
A section of a page can be a transclusion of a separate page or template. See Help:Template#Composite pages. This in effect gives the section its own separate edit history (i.e., the page history of the transcluded page) and also allows registered users to watch it separately.
In a page calling a template with sections, the sections in the template are numbered according to their position in the rendered page, e.g. if the template tag is in the third section, then the first section of the template is numbered four. Any text in the template before its first section shows up as part of the section with the template tag, and any text after the tag before a new heading shows up as part of the last section of the template. This may be done deliberately, but can usually better be avoided (see also below).
In MediaWiki software, a section heading in wikitext is defined by a regular expression, /(^={1,6}.*?={1,6}\s*?$)/m (m refers to multi-line mode).
| Shortcut: WP:TOC |
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For each page with more than three headings, a table of contents (TOC) is automatically generated from the section headings, unless:
When either __FORCETOC__ or __TOC__ (with two underscores on either side of the word) is placed in the wikitext, a TOC is added even if the page has fewer than four headings.
With __FORCETOC__, the TOC is placed before the first section heading. With __TOC__, it is placed at the same position where this code is placed. This allows any positioning, e.g. on the right or in a table cell. In old versions of MediaWiki, it also allows multiple occurrence, e.g. in every section (However, this seems only useful if the sections are long, so that the TOCs take up only a small part of the total space.).
There may be some introductory text before the TOC, known as the "lead". Although usually a heading after the TOC is preferable, __TOC__ can be used to avoid being forced to insert a meaningless heading just to position the TOC correctly, i.e., not too low.
Using __NOTOC__ it is possible to disable the normal table of contents. Section links, as explained below, allow creating compact ToCs, e.g. alphabetical [[#A|A]] [[#B|B]] etc.
The TOC's depth can be limited by the use of Template:TOClimit. This template can reduce the number of "header levels" visible to the reader – thus avoiding the problem of an overwhelming TOC when an article has many headings and sub-headings.
This Table of contents can be forced onto a floating table on the right hand of the screen with the code below:
{| align="right"
| __TOC__
|}
It is possible to limit the depth of sub-sections to show in the TOC globally using $wgMaxTocLevel. If configuration setting $wgMaxTocLevel in LocalSettings.php is set to 3 for example, only first and second level headings show up in the TOC. Until version 1.10.0rc1, there is a bug in the parser making a limited TOC display incorrectly. A simple solution is proposed in bug report 6204.
In the HTML code for each section there is an anchor HTML element "a" with both "name" and "id" attributes holding the section title. This enables linking directly to sections. These section anchors are automatically used by MediaWiki when it generates a table of contents for the page, and therefore when a section heading in the ToC is clicked, it will jump to the section. Also, the section anchors can be manually linked directly to one section within a page.
The HTML code generated at the beginning of this section, for example, is:
<p><a name="Section_linking" id="Section_linking"></a></p> <h2>Section linking</h2>
A link to this section (Section linking) looks like this:
To link to a section in the same page you can use [[#section name|displayed text]], and to link to a section in another page [[page name#section name|displayed text]].
The anchors disregard the depth of the section; a link to a subsection or sub-subsection etc. will be [[#subsection name]] and [[#sub-subsection name]] etc.
An underscore and number are appended to duplicate section names. E.g. for three sections named "Example", the names (for section linking) will be "Example", "Example_2" and "Example_3". However, after editing section "Example_2" or "Example_3" (see below), one, confusingly, arrives at section "Example" from the edit summary.
If a section has a blank space as heading, it results in a link in the TOC that does not work. For a similar effect see NS:0.
To create an anchor target without a section heading, you can use a span: <span id="anchor_name"></span> but this won't work with some very old browsers.
Notes:
For linking to an arbitrary position in a page see Section linking (anchors).
A link that specifies a section of a redirect page corresponds to a link to that section of the target of the redirect.
A redirect to a section of a page may also work in some environments (see bug 218), try e.g. the redirect page Section linking and redirects. (One might have to force reload CSS style sheets.)
A complication is that, unlike renaming a page, renaming a section does not create some kind of redirect. Also, there is no separate backlink feature for sections, pages linking to the section are included in the list of pages linking to the page. Possible workarounds:
Redirect pages can be categorized by adding a category tag after the redirect command. In the case that the target of the redirect is a section, this has to some extent the effect of categorizing the section: through the redirect the category page links to the section; however, unless an explicit link is put, the section does not link to the category. On the category page, redirects are displayed with class redirect-in-category, so they can be shown in e.g. italics; this can be defined in MediaWiki:Common.css. See also WP:Categorizing redirects.
Sections can be separately edited by clicking special edit links labeled "[edit]" by the heading, or by right clicking on the section heading, depending on the preferences set. This is called "section editing feature" (Preferences -> Editing -> "Enable section editing via [edit] links"). Section editing feature will take you to an edit page by a URL such as
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Help:Section&action=edit§ion=2
Note that here section numbers are used, not section titles; subsections have a single number, e.g. section 2.1 may be numbered 3, section 3 is then numbered 4, etc. You can also directly type in such URLs in the address bar of your browser.
This is convenient if the edit does not involve other sections and one needs not have the text of other sections at hand during the edit (or if one needs it, open the section edit link in a new window, or during section editing, open the main page in a different window). Section editing alleviates some problems of large pages.
"__NOEDITSECTION__" anywhere on the page will remove the edit links. It will not disable section editing itself; right clicking on the section heading and the url still work.
Inserting a section can be done by editing either the section before or after it, merging with the previous section by deleting the heading. Note that in these cases the preloaded section name in the edit summary is not correct, and has to be changed or deleted.
Adding a section at the end can also be done with a URL like http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Meta:Sandbox&action=edit§ion=new . On talk pages and pages with in the wikitext the code __NEWSECTIONLINK__ a special link labeled with the message with id 'addsection' (talk), e.g. "+" or "Post a new comment", is provided for this. In this case, a text box having as title the message with id 'subject' (talk), e.g. "Subject/headline", will appear and the content you type in it will become the section heading. There is no inputbox for the edit summary, it is automatically created according to the pattern of message with id 'newsectionsummary' (talk), where "/* $1 */" represents a right arrow linking to the new section and, with CSS-class "autocomment", the name of the section followed by " - ". In the case of the default of message newsectionsummary this is followed by the text "new section". The user cannot provide more text for the edit summary than just the header itself (use the method mentioned earlier if that is desired).
Parameter "preloadtitle" provides initial content of the "Subject/headline" box, e.g.:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Meta:Sandbox&action=edit§ion=new&preloadtitle=pqr
It can be edited before saving.
See also linking in an edit summary to a section, "Post a comment" feature, and w:Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#New_section.
In general, no particular link for editing the introductory text before the first section heading is provided. However, section editing feature can also be applied to this part by giving 0 as the section number such as http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Help:Section&action=edit§ion=0 . A less cumbersome way to obtain this link is to use any section edit link of the page, and change the number of the section to zero.
Javascript can also create this URL, see w:Wikipedia:WikiProject User scripts/Scripts/Edit Top.
The {{Edit-first-section}} and {{Edit-top-section}} templates create an edit link for the section 0. Each is positioned slightly differently. Copy these templates to your wiki. (Note: These are not available on the English Wikipedia due to the availability of "Special:Preferences > Gadgets > User Interface Gadgets".)
See also Help:Section editing demo.
The preview in section editing does not always show the same as the corresponding part of the full page, e.g. if on the full page an image in the previous section intrudes into the section concerned.
The edit page shows the list of templates used on the whole page, i.e. also the templates used in other sections.
Subsections are included in the part of the section that is edited. Section numbering is relative to the part that is edited, so on the relative top level there is always just number 1, relative subsections all have numbers starting with 1: 1.1., 1.2, etc.; e.g., when editing subsection 3.2, sub-subsection 3.2.4 is numbered 1.4. However, the heading format is according to the absolute level.
If a page has very large sections, or is very large and has no division into sections, and one's browser or connection does not allow editing of such a large section, then one can still:
If one can view the wikitext of a large section, one can divide the page into smaller sections by step by step appending one, and finally deleting the original content (this can be done one large section at a time). Thus temporarily there is partial duplication of the content, so it is useful to put an explanation in the edit summary.
This section appears in Help:Section.
The editing facilities can also be applied to a section of an included template. This section, Help:Editing sections of included templates, is an \"{{{1}}}", is, if we want to preserve the parameter, not edited by editing the template but by editing the template call, even though the rendered page and its edit links do not automatically show that. Some explanatory text and/or an extra edit link can be useful. In this case, to edit "{{{1}}}" we have to edit the template tag on the page calling the template. If we use section editing the relevant section edit link is that at the header appearing before the header in the template itself.
The __NOEDITSECTION__ tag in any template affects both that template, the pages it's included on, and any other templates included on the same page.
When conditionally (using a parser function) transcluding a template with sections, edit links of this and subsequent sections will edit the wrong section or give the error mesage that the section does not exist (although the page (including TOC) is correctly displayed and the TOC links correctly). This is because for the targets of the edit links the content of conditionally included templates is considered part of the page itself, and the sections are counted after expansion.
Thus the edit links of the sections of the included template link to the page itself instead of the template, and the edit links after the included template link to the correct page but the wrong section number.
More generally conditional sections give such a complication.
The problem does not occur when transcluding a template with a conditional name (which has more advantages). Use m:Template:void (backlinks, edit) for the template to transclude to produce nothing.
To edit a footnote rendered in a section containing the code <references />, edit the section with the footnote mark referring to it, see Help:Footnotes. However, the resulting text of the footnote is not shown in a preview of the section via "Show preview", so any mistake made by the editor will not be discovered until after the section edit is saved via "Save page". A workaround is to temporarily add a <references/> or {{reflist}} tag at the end of the section prior to previewing it. But after you are satisfied with the text of the reference shown in the preview, this temporary tag must be removed before the edit is saved.
The section editing feature can also be used to just view a section without loading the whole page. There is no other way.
Advantages of separate pages:
Advantages of one large page with sections:
An alternative is composing a page of other pages using the template feature (creating a compound document by Transclusion). This allows easy searching within the combined rendered page, but not in the combined wikitext. As a disadvantage, a title for each page has to be provided. For the pre-expand include size limit this is disadvantageous even compared with one large page: the pre-expand include size is the sum of the pre-expand include sizes of the components plus the sum of sizes of the wikitexts of the components.
In some older versions of MediaWiki, if you didn't want a heading to show up in the generated Table of Contents at the top of the page, you could use HTML to make the heading.
<h2>A level-2 heading that shouldn't show up in the TOC</h2>
That is no longer supported; by design, HTML headings now show up in the TOC no matter what; see the discussion at MediaWiki's BugZilla tracker.
A simple extension can give you the ability to create non-TOC headings. Try the following, which was written using instructions from Extending wiki markup:
<?php
# HForCommentsButNotInTOC.php
# Example WikiMedia extension
# with WikiMedia's extension mechanism it is possible to define
# new tags of the form
# <TAGNAME> some text </TAGNAME>
# the function registered by the extension gets the text between the
# tags as input and can transform it into arbitrary HTML code.
# Note: The output is not interpreted as WikiText but directly
# included in the HTML output. So Wiki markup is not supported.
# To activate the extension, include it from your LocalSettings.php
# with: include("extensions/YourExtensionName.php");
$wgExtensionFunctions[] = "wfForComments";
function wfForComments() {
global $wgParser;
# register the extension with the WikiText parser
# the first parameter is the name of the new tag.
# In this case it defines the tag <example> ... </example>
# the second parameter is the callback function for
# processing the text between the tags
$wgParser->setHook( "xh1", "renderxh", 0, 1 );
$wgParser->setHook( "xh2", "renderxh", 0, 2 );
$wgParser->setHook( "xh3", "renderxh", 0, 3 );
$wgParser->setHook( "xh4", "renderxh", 0, 4 );
}
# The callback function for converting the input text to HTML output
function renderxh( $input, $argv, &$parser, $num ) {
$output = "<h{$num}>$input</h{$num}>";
return $output;
}
?>
Then of course you have to install the extension by adding the following to LocalSettings.php:
require_once("extensions/HCommentsButNotInTOC.php");
To add an <h3> heading that won't show up in the TOC, do it as:
<xh3>Text for an h3 heading that won't be in the TOC</xh3>
This is pretty crude. Perhaps someone who actually knows PHP (instead of doing monkey-see-monkey-do programming like I just did) could rewrite this code more elegantly.
Add this code to YourLanguage:MediaWiki:Common.css (substituting NameOfYourPage for the correspondent translation into your language:
.page-NameOfYourMainPage .firstHeading { display:none; }
This section is linked to from #Section linking.
This section is linked to from #Section linking.
The size of sections may vary, depending on what kind of subject is described and other variables. "Hard" knowledge, e.g. biochemistry articles, presenting many names and mechanisms in a short interval may have shorter section size, while, on the other hand, "soft" knowledge, like articles concerning movies, may have longer ones. There is no strict rule about how long a section may be, just as with wikipedia article size. Nevertheless, a proper section size is probably somewhere between 80 and 500 words. More specifically, "hard" knowledge articles should contain between 80 and 250, while "soft" ones may contain more than 250. Each article's content should determine its section sizing — many short sections make it easier to find desired information about a subject, but may, when used in excess, also disturb the fluency of an article.
Several kinds of compact TOC can be found at Wikipedia:Template messages/Compact tables of contents. Also note that a normal compact TOC will not work on a Category page; see the same page's section on how to make a compact TOC on a Category page.
The TOC can, in some instances, be floated either right or left using {{TOC right}} or {{TOC left}} when it is beneficial to the layout of the article, or when the default TOC gets in the way of other elements. Before changing the default TOC to a floated TOC, consider the following guidelines:
The {{TOC right}} template was proposed for deletion in early July 2005, but there was no consensus on the matter. The archive of the discussion and voting regarding this may be seen at Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/TOCright. The Manual of Style discussion can be found here.
When an article or project page has a very large number of subsections, it may be appropriate to hide lower-level subsections from the TOC. You can specify a limit for the lowest-level section that should be displayed using {{TOClimit|limit=n}}, where n is the number of = signs that are used on each side of the lowest-level section header that should be displayed (e.g. 3 to show ===sections=== but hide ====sections====). The limit=n parameter can also be given to {{TOCleft}} or {{TOCright}} the same way.
A section expansion template is placed for a proposed section for the article, but not filled, or where a section is so small as to provide negligible information. In the empty or near-empty section you have to include {{expand-section}}.
See section expansion page.
Please note that Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information, so see also sections should only include links directly pertaining to the topic of an article and not large general pieces of information loosely connected (or not at all connected) to the subject.
In essence, the same guidelines apply for titles of sections as for general naming conventions of articles (see Wikipedia:Naming conventions). In short, they should be easily recognizable by English speakers, be brief without being ambiguous and should be chosen, where possible, to avoid implying a viewpoint.
See also Wikipedia:Words to avoid#Article and section titles for advice on how to maintain NPOV.
In addition, sections containing many references to various studies are preferably not simply titled "Research" without further specification. Unless the contents relate to principles or techniques in researching, and could fit into the main article Research, the titles of such sections are better specified with what the studies and their results are aimed at. "Research" alone tend to make the section a miscellaneous and unorganized dump of random studies that have any link to the subject.