Help:Link

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A video screencast showing how to create links
This page is about how to markup links. For various URLs of Wikipedia and other Wikimedia servers, see Help:URL.
"H:L" redirects here. For help with lists, see Help:List.

This page explains how to make the wikilink, interwiki link, or external web link (as hyperlinks) connections on Wikipedia, which give readers one-click access to other Wikipedia pages, other Wikimedia projects, and external websites.

A link has various (changeable) appearances on the "anchor" page, and the "target" page which owns the "backlinks" can count the links to it with the WP:What links here tool.

For a short list of some basic shortcuts, see Wikipedia:Cheatsheet.

For guidelines on how links should be used in Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Linking.

Wikilinks[edit]

A wikilink (or internal link) links a page to another page within English Wikipedia. Links are enclosed in doubled square brackets like this:

  • [[abc]] is seen as "abc" in text and links to page "abc".

Use a vertical bar "|" (the "pipe" symbol — see Wikipedia:Piped link for how to type one) to create a link while labelling it with a different name on the original page. The first term inside the brackets is the link (the page you would be taken to), while anything you type after the vertical bar is what that link looks like on the original page. Here are some examples:

  • [[a|b]] is labelled "b" on this page but links to page "a".
  • [[a]]b gives ab. So does [[a|ab]]: ab. The code [[a|b]]c gives bc, just like [[a|bc]] does. However, all four of these examples will link to page "a".
  • a[[b]] gives ab.
  • [[a]]:b gives a:b since the colon is outside the end brackets. The same goes for [[Washington]]'s or e-[[mail]].
  • [[a]]''b'' gives ab. (Double apostrophes turn on and off italics.)
  • ''[[a]]''b gives ab.
  • [[a|b]]cd gives bcd.
  • [[a]]<nowiki />b gives ab. (The nowiki tag is needed to turn off the so-called "linktrail rules".)
  • [[a|b]]<nowiki />c gives bc.

Links with a specified label are said to be "piped" because the pipe symbol is used ("|"). For certain types of link, the label will be generated automatically if a pipe is typed, even with no label after it (meaning you don't have to type one). See Help:Pipe trick.

The link target is case-sensitive except for the first character (so [[atom]] links to "Atom" but [[ATom]] does not). Other ways in which link targets are reinterpreted are described further: Conversion to canonical form.

If the target of a wikilink does not exist, it is displayed in red color, and is called a "red link". If a red link is clicked, the user is taken to a blank page where it is possible to create a page using that redlinked title. While on that blank page, other red links to this (non-existent) title can be detected using the "What links here" feature.

If the target of a link is the same as the page on which it appears (a self-link), it is displayed in bold font, as with: Help:Link.

Attempting to link normally to an image page, category page or interlanguage link will produce a different effect: this will respectively place the image on the page, add the page to the category, or create an interlanguage link at the edge of the page. To override this behavior, insert an initial colon ":", as in [[:File:Mediawiki.png]], [[:Category:Help]], [[:fr:Help:Link]].

Interwiki links[edit]

An interwiki link links to a page on another Wikimedia project website, such as Meta or another language Wikipedia. The target site must be on the interwiki map specified for the source wiki. These links have the same [[...]] syntax as wikilinks (see previously), but take a prefix ":x:" which specifies the target site.

For example, [[m:Help:Link]] links to the "Help:Link" page on Meta, while [[:commons:Athens]] links to page "Athens" on Wikimedia Commons as: commons:Athens.

Interwiki links can be piped, just as with wikilinks. Remember that an interlanguage link should be preceded by a colon if it is to be displayed, where it is inserted in the text, as an inline interlanguage link; otherwise it will be displayed in the list of interlanguage links at the side of the page (which is appropriate only if it is the most closely corresponding page in the other-language Wikipedia). Thus (incorporating the pipe trick), [[:ja:Wikilink|]] would be used to link to Wikilink on Japanese Wikipedia. Example: ([[:ja:URL|]] links to URL on Japanese Wikipedia).

Interwiki links (like external links) are displayed in a slightly paler blue than ordinary wikilinks. The MediaWiki page formatting does not detect whether these target pages exist, so they are never displayed in red.

External links[edit]

External links use absolute URLs to link directly to any Web page. These links have the associated CSS class "external". External links are in the form [http://www.example.org link name] (resulting in link name), with the link name separated from the URL by a space and followed by an external link icon. Links without link names appear numbered: [http://www.example.org] becomes: [1]. Links with no square brackets display in their entirety: http://www.example.org.

See Help:URL#Linking to URLs for more detailed information.

Special:LinkSearch finds all pages linking to a given site.

The external link syntax can also be used to link to particular page versions within Wikipedia that are not accessible by wikilinks, such as page history, edit view, an old version of a page, the diff between two versions, etc. It can also be used to create a navigational image.

To display a link without the arrow icon, place the external link syntax between <span class="plainlinks">...</span> tags.

Registered users at the English Wikipedia can select "Open external links in a new tab/window" under Gadgets at user preferences. It is not possible to make an external link open in a new tab / window for others.

Dropping http: and https:[edit]

If you make an external style link using square brackets [...] from a Wikimedia page to other Wikimedia page, including Wikipedia of course, it's better to drop the protocol http: or https:, so that the URL begins with //..., e.g. //en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Help:URL.

Otherwise, readers are forced to use the specified connection method. If you don't specify the protocol, readers can continue to use the protocol to read that page.

The URL returned by {{SERVER}} magic word begins with //.

  • Example: [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Help:Link no protocol]
  • Result: no protocol (read this page both with http and https)

What is an "anchor"?[edit]

The word "anchor" has opposing meanings. In the context of a link from an anchor to a target, it is the starting place. In the context of the template {{anchor}}, an "anchor" is a landing place for a link to jump to.

The anchor template proceeds to automatically create some invisible coding from certain text in the "landing place", taking into account certain parameters in reference templates in general. So for developers the word "anchor" may refer to the landing place in general, to the mostly invisible code, or to the text and parameters from which the code is created.

Section linking (anchors)[edit]

Shortcut:
Not to be confused with WP:ANCHORS.

To link to a section or subsection in the same page, you can use: [[#section name|displayed text]], and to link to a section or subsection in another page: [[page name#section name|displayed text]]. Note that section name is entirely case sensitive, in contrast to article links, where the first letter is not case sensitive.

If more than one section on a destination page has the same title, a link to the title is to the first section with that title. If the link should be to another section with the title, append to the linked title _2, _3, and so on, without a space, counting from the top of the destination page and without regard to whether a section is a section or a subsection. For example, multiple sections titled "History" may be linked to as "History", "History_2", and so on.

The section title in fact points to an anchor on the target page. It may be preferable to define anchors other than explicit section titles, using the HTML code <span id="anchor_name">...</span>, or {{Anchor|anchor name}} (see {{Anchor}} syntax).

Section links still work if the wikilink is a redirect. For example, if Danzig redirects to Gdańsk, then Danzig#History will link to the "History" section of the article Gdańsk. It is also possible to put section links inside redirects (these work only if JavaScript is enabled). For example, Wikipedia:Section link redirects to Help:Link#Section linking (anchors) using #redirect processing. Note that an explicit section link overrides any section link in a redirect, so Wikipedia:Section link#Interwiki links will go to the "Interwiki links" section of this page.

For more information, see Help:Section. See also WP:TARGET.

Anchor links can also be added to external URLs and to interwiki links, again using the # syntax. Note that if the page name is automatically converted, then the section link still works, but disappears from the address bar (this makes it more difficult to bookmark the section itself).

Linking to part of a section[edit]

Anchors (see #Section linking (anchors)) can also be used to link to any part of a section. For example, if you want to link to the fifth sentence of a section, you just place an anchor at the start of that sentence, and you can then link to that anchor in the same way as you would link to any other anchor. However you need to choose an anchor name that is unique in that page (that article or that Talk Page), and is likely to remain unique, as when several anchors have the same name in the same page the link will go to the first anchor. Using the date and time as part of the anchor name is a simple way to help keep it unique (for example by calling it something like "ThisSection2014-09-22-18-05a1").

Anchors can also be placed anywhere inside sentences (for example at the start of a clause), and inside notes and citations, though it is advisable to test first in your sandbox before trying some exotic new kind of location for the first time.

There are a small number of special anchor names, see #Table row linking.

Table row linking[edit]

To create an anchor for a row of a table see Help:Table#Section link or map link to a row anchor. However [[#top]] and [[#toc]] are reserved names that link to the top of a page and the table of contents, respectively.

Subpage links[edit]

A subpage is an acceptable construct in article talk space, though not in article space. Links to and from a subpage are very convenient, even if there is an entire array of subpages in a tree-like structure. The convenience is that rather than requiring a page name in the link, a relative reference to its parent page is denoted ".." in a wikilink on that (child) subpage, and a closing "/" is required. The link will display the actual page name, not the dots.

For example, a search for subpages of the Manual of style shows that it has a total of 138 subpages. But these are arranged in a subpage-tree structure, having 97 branches, 35 of which have two subpages, and 5 of which have three subpages. Surely these six pages of the Manual of style are interlinked using the subpage links as in the table that follows.

Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Accessibility

Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Accessibility/Data tables tutorial
Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Accessibility/Signatures

Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Accessibility/Data tables tutorial/Internal guidelines

Given the seven page names Fullpagename/A/B/C plus Fullpagename/S/T/V:

On page Wikilink Displays Description
Fullpagename/A/B [[../]] Fullpagename/A Parent
Fullpagename/A/B/C [[../../]] Fullpagename/A Grandparent
Fullpagename/A/B [[/C]] /C Child
Fullpagename/A/B [[/C/]] C Child
Fullpagename/A [[../S]] Fullpagename/S Sibling
Fullpagename/A [[../S/]] S Sibling
Fullpagename/A/B [[../../S/T]] Fullpagename/S/T Cousin

Linking to a section heading or {{anchor}} also works. The syntax is [[../#Section name]].

Because any title can have a "/" in it, it is not clear from a title Page name/a/b/c/d whether Page name/a/b/c has one or two parent pages: it has one if a/b is part of one page name; it has two if a is a page and b is a page; but the search prefix:Page name will list all subpages as they are titled. Where an article title starts with the "/" character, the workaround uses the syntax [[:Page name]], where the first character of the page name is "/". (An initial colon is always allowed in links to, and inclusions from, article namespace to denote "mainspace". Use only when needed.)

For more information:

ISBN, RFC and PMID automatic links[edit]

For more details on this topic, see Help:Magic links.

Key words ISBN, PMID and RFC will generate internal or external links automatically:

What you type How it renders Description
ISBN 978-0-12-345678-9 ISBN 978-0-12-345678-9 An internal ISBN link to Special:Booksources/9780123456789
RFC 4321 RFC 4321 A Request for Comments externally linked to http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4321
PMID 12345678 PMID 12345678 A PubMed document externally linked to http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12345678?dopt=Abstract

To prevent such automatic linking, use a <nowiki/> between the identifier and the value or a non breaking space.

Piped link[edit]

A piped link is an internal link or interwiki link where the link target and link label are both specified. This is needed in the case that they are not equal, while also the link label is not equal to the link target with the last word extended. This allows linking a word or phrase within the text of a page rather than using "see also", even if the wording does not exactly correspond with the name of the target page. With a suitable browser and depending on the preferences set, one can still see the link target: when you point at the link, the name shows up in a hover tooltip and is also shown in the status bar.

For instance:

[[coffeehouse setup|How to set up a coffee house]]
will show: How to set up a coffee house

Another example would be [[train station|station]] rendering as station. This is useful where the word "station" is used in an article on trains; from the context, it would be clear that a train station is meant. The piped link is more convenient to the user than a link to station which might be a disambiguation page.

The word piped refers to the use of the pipe character "|" used to separate the good description from the actual link. This character is named after another use of it; see Pipe (computing).

Using a redirect as alternative[edit]

An alternative to a piped link is simply using redirect pages. To create How to set up a coffee house, use [[How to set up a coffee house]] and make this a redirect to coffeehouse setup (note that, unlike previously, the tooltip that shows when you point at the link, if applicable for your browser, is simply the text already shown).

This is convenient if the redirect is already there or will also be of use elsewhere; however, there are a few drawbacks:

  • the tooltip does not show the page one will arrive at
  • "Related changes" gives the changes in the redirect page not the redirect target
  • the redirect message on the target page slightly clutters it

Combining a piped link and a redirect, one can provide some information that is not the name of the page one links to in the hover tooltip, i.e. the following pipe to a redirect [[United Nations Organization|UNO]] will display a tooltip "United Nations Organization" when hovering over UNO, thereby explaining the abbreviation.

Automatic conversion of the wikitext[edit]

Pipe trick[edit]

See also: Help:Pipe trick

If in a piped link the part after the "|" is left empty, it is converted to an abbreviated form of the linked page, as follows:

  1. Any word before the first colon (:), as well as the colon itself, is removed. This word may or may not be a namespace prefix (such as "Help:") or an interwiki prefix (such as "commons:"). If the page name is preceded by a colon, "first" refers to "first after this".
  2. If there is text in parentheses at the end it will be removed.
  3. If there are no parentheses but there is a comma, the comma and everything after it are removed.
  4. The link will be in whatever case is used.

Just like for the three or four tildes when signing on Talk pages and the use of subst, in a preview, the result already shows up in the preview itself, but the conversion in the edit box is not yet shown. Press "Show changes" to see the change in the wikitext.

Examples[edit]
Colon[edit]
  • [[Help:Template|]] is converted to [[Help:Template|Template]], which is rendered as Template.
  • [[Music: My life|]] is converted to [[Music: My life| My life]], which is rendered as My life — although "Music:" is not a namespace (therefore the space after the colon is not automatically removed), the shortcut works anyway.
  • [[w:en:Pipe (computing)|]] is converted to [[w:en:Pipe (computing)|en:Pipe]], which is rendered as en:Pipe.
Case[edit]
  • [[pipe (computing)|]] is converted to [[pipe (computing)|pipe]] which is rendered as pipe.
  • [[Pipe (computing)|]] is converted to [[Pipe (computing)|Pipe]] which is rendered as Pipe.
Comma[edit]
  • [[commons:Boston, Massachusetts|]] is converted to [[commons:Boston, Massachusetts|Boston]], which is rendered as Boston.
Other[edit]

Parameters and variables:

  • [[w:{{{1}}}|]] does not give [[w:{{{1}}}|{{{1}}}]].
    Calling the template with a value of parameter 1 gives a working link in the case of substitution only.
  • [[w:en:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|]] does not give [[w:en:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|en:{{FULLPAGENAME}}]].
    [[m:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|]] does not give [[m:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|{{FULLPAGENAME}}]]

See also Limitation further.

* [[project:a (b)|]]
* [[w:project:a (b)|]]
* [[:de:project:a (b)|]]
* [[wiktionary:project:a (b)|]]
* [[wiktionary:de:project:a (b)|]]
* [[wikibooks:project:a (b)|]]
* [[wikiquote:project:a (b)|]]
* [[wikisource:project:a (b)|]]
* [[w:en:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|]]
** [[w:en:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|en:{{FULLPAGENAME}}]]
* [[m:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|]]
** [[m:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|{{FULLPAGENAME}}]]

Which looks like:

Category tag[edit]

The sort key syntax of the category being like a piped link, the pipe trick also works for category tags, even though it is not useful there.

Limitation[edit]

  • [[Help:L{{tc}}k|]] using template:tc ( talk edit history links ) is not converted, so the result is rendered as [[Help:L{{tlc|...}}k|]] and not as a working link. This is because the pipe trick expansion, like substitution, occurs before ordinary expansion of templates, etc., while the pipe trick does not work if the linked page contains invalid characters. Thus, while ordinarily the acceptability of the target page name is judged after template expansion, the pipe trick expansion judges it before, the braces are considered invalid characters in the page name. Instead one can use a template like template:pipe trick ( talk edit history links ): {{pipe trick|Help:|L{{tc}}k}} gives Template:Pipe trick. [clarification needed]

Inverse pipe trick[edit]

On page "A (c)", [[|b]] is automatically converted to [[b (c)|b]].

Similarly, on page "A, c", [[|b]] is automatically converted to [[b, c|b]].

For examples, see here.

Changing link appearance[edit]

The ways that various links are displayed in browsers, as described above, are the default display styles in the default skin. Users can change the way they see links:

  • By selecting a different skin.
  • By applying a user style using CSS.
  • By changing the "Underline links" or "Format broken links like this" value on the Appearance tab of user preferences.
  • By setting the "threshold for stub display" on the Appearance tab of user preferences. This causes links to pages in mainspace to be displayed in a distinctive fashion — dark red by default — if the wikitext of the target page has less than a specified number of bytes. (Any section markers in the link are ignored. Links to redirects are displayed in the normal style.)

Hover tooltips[edit]

In many browsers, holding the cursor over a link (mouseover) shows a hover tooltip containing the text of the link's HTML title attribute. MediaWiki — the software which runs Wikipedia — sets this to the target page name (without any section indication) if it's a wikilink, the page name with prefix if it's an interwiki link, and the link address (URL) if it's an external link. (This can be switched off in the user preferences.) The browser may also show similar information, including any section indication, in the status bar.

For these effects a piped link is useful even if it is not followed; for example, for displaying the meaning of an acronym. It is possible to produce a hover tooltip without a link, using the {{H:title}} template.

Disallowed characters[edit]

A link whose target contains disallowed characters (see WP:Page name) will be displayed without markup, as in [[A{b}]].

Conversions are automatically made to non-literal characters in wiki and interwiki links. For example, "[[Help:Page%20name]]" becomes "Help:Page name". However, the opposite is true for external links; literal characters are converted into non-literal characters. For example, most browsers convert ".../wiki/!" to ".../wiki/%21".

Some characters in a web address link need to be represented as escape characters because they are reserved for Wikipedia edits. Examples include %5B for [, %5D for ], %3C for <, %3E for >, %7B for {, %7D for }, and %26 for & but more can be found by reading about percent encoding. Numeric character references (e.g. &#91; or &#x5B;) should not be used in external links because the ampersand character (&) has a special meaning in a URL.

A code like %70 in a redirect disables it, although the link works from the redirect page. For a redirect that works, the redirect page shows the canonical form of the target, unlike its preview page, which renders the link in the usual way.

Links containing URL query strings[edit]

Because the ampersand character (&) is disallowed, it is not possible to create an ordinary link containing &action=edit or &redirect=no in the URL query string. These kinds of links can be helpful in user pages. Also, a redirect page can have categories and you might wish to view or edit these in a single click.

The following syntax shows the use of the magic word fullurl as it would appear in a template constructed to append action=edit to the URL query string:

[{{fullurl:{{{1}}}|action=edit}} {{{1}}}]

Note that this will render as an external link rather than as an internal link and for this reason it might not appear in what-links-here queries associated with the target page.

Links to and from a page[edit]

To list pages which link to the current page (backlinks), use the What links here feature. The {{orphan}} tag can be placed on pages with no incoming links.

To make the current page show up at "What links here" for a certain other page without creating a working link to that other page, use a link with a space following the pipe, as in [[Main page| ]].

To list all pages which are linked from a particular page, enter the following URL, using the page title (with spaces replaced by underscores) in place of PAGENAME:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&prop=links&pllimit=500&titles=PAGENAME

The number of links returned is limited to 500.

Additional link-related functions[edit]

For the effect that links have on date formatting, see Help:Date formatting and linking.

Another link-dependent feature is related changes, which make it possible to view recent changes to all pages which are linked from the current page (or which are members of the category, if it is a category page).

For information on how to link to pages from an image, see mw:Extension:ImageMap.

Several templates have been created to make linking easier (although they are not usually used in article space). These include {{tl}} and {{tlx}} for linking to templates, and {{cl}} and {{lc}} for linking to categories. More can be found in Category:Internal link templates.

Conversion to canonical form[edit]

As described previously, if a link target begins with a lower case letter, it will be interpreted as if it began with the equivalent capital letter. If the target contains a namespace prefix, then the whole prefix and the first character after the colon are case-insensitive (so uSeR:jimbo Wales links to User:Jimbo Wales).

In link targets, spaces and underscores (which are effectively equivalent) are ignored if they come at the start, at the end, or immediately before or after the colon following a namespace prefix. Consecutive spaces / underscores are treated as a single space. Hence _User_: Jimbo_ __ Wales__ links to User:Jimbo Wales.

Also, HTML character references and percent-encoded characters are replaced with their raw character. For example, [[d&eacute;partement]] produces département, and [[%40]] produces @. Links which resolve to invalid page titles are displayed as unmarked-up wikitext.

Titles indicated by wikilinks are displayed in canonical form (with correction of capitalization and excess spaces / underscores removed, as described previously) in the following places:

  • In transclusion tags for non-existent pages: {{qwsazx}} gives Template:Qwsazx.
  • In tooltips and in the status bar (if applicable for the browser) when the mouse cursor is moved over the link.
  • On redirect pages.
  • In the category box.

The prefixes in interwiki links are treated similarly to namespace prefixes: they are insensitive to case and to spaces before and after the colon. However the first character after the colon is not automatically capitalized (whether it is interpreted as a capital depends on the configuration of the target wiki).

See also[edit]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Section_linking
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