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This guideline is a part of the English Wikipedia's Manual of Style. Editors should follow it, except where common sense and the occasional exception will improve an article. Before editing this page, please make sure that your revision reflects consensus. |
Contents |
How to create links
- See also: Help:Link
We recommend to editors who are creating internal links ( [[ ]] ) that they :
- Click on the "Show preview" bar first, then
- Click on the links that you have created and see where they go. If they go where you want, then
- Click on "Save page". If they do not go where you want, then
- Fix them right then so that they do, then
- Click on "Save page".
All of the things that need to be typed in like (film) or (1935 film) or (TV series) or changing the link to avoid redirects can be done right then and there. Wikipedia's charm is diminished when links lead to areas that have nothing to do with the subject at hand. Much of what we have mentioned also applies to creating external links ( [ ] ), but we have found very few of these that went somewhere unintended.
Internal links
Items in Wikipedia articles can be linked to other Wikipedia articles that provide information that significantly adds to readers' understanding of the topic. This can be done directly ("[[Ant]]", which results in "Ant"), or through a piped link ("[[Ant|five new species]]", which results in "five new species" in the text, but still links to the article "Ant").
Internal links add to the cohesion and utility of Wikipedia by allowing readers to deepen their understanding of a topic by conveniently accessing other articles. These links should be included where it is most likely that readers might want to use them; for example, in article leads, the beginnings of new sections, table cells, and image captions. Generally, where it is likely that a reader may wish to read about another topic, the reader should not have to hunt for a link elsewhere in the page.
Do not link items in the title or headers.
Do not pipe links in disambiguation pages.
Overlinking and underlinking
Do not make too many links. An article may be overlinked if any of the following is true:
- There are links to articles that are not likely to exist or if they did would have little significance in the context of the article;
- Low added-value items are linked without reason—such as, 1995, 1980s, and 20th century. The names of geographical locations that are likely to be well-known to English-speakers should generally not be linked where, in the context, they are unlikely to confused with other locations of the same name, and the linked article would not specifically add to readers' understanding of the topic at hand; this includes country names such as United States, UK, Australia, Canada, Germany, India and China, and the names of cities such as New York City, London, Moscow and Paris.
- Two links are next to each other in the text, so that it looks like one link—such as internal links;
- A link for any single term is excessively repeated in the same article, as in the example of overlinking that follows: "Excessive" typically means more than once for the same term in an article. The purpose of links is to direct the reader to a new spot at a point where the reader is most likely to take a temporary detour due to a need for more information; this is usually on the first occurrence of the term, although the subsequent linking of an important item distant from its previous occurrence in an article may occasionally be appropriate in a table or in a subsection to which readers may jump directly, either within the article or via a section-link from another article.
Form
Links that follow the Wikipedia naming conventions are much more likely to lead to existing articles. When there is not yet an article about that subject, good links will make the creation of a correctly named article much easier for later writers.
It is possible to link words that are not exactly the same as the linked article title—for example, [[English language|English]]. However, make sure that it is still clear what the link refers to without having to follow the link.
When forming plurals, do so thus: [[language]]s. This is clearer to read in wiki form than [[language|languages]]—and easier to type. This syntax is also applicable to adjective constructs such as [[Asia]]n and the like. Hyphens and apostrophes must be included in the link to show as part of the same word. For example [[Jane's Fighting Ships|Jane's]] or [[truant|playing-the-hop]]. Keeping possessive apostrophes inside the link, where possible, makes for more readable text and source, though either form is acceptable for possessive forms of links such as [[George Washington]]'s or [[George Washington|George Washington's]].
Links are not sensitive to capitalization (see below), so pipe-linking to fix a capitalization problem should never be necessary. Rather, it is most simple to directly use the form that is most readable in the clear text.
Context
As the World Wide Web Consortium says, "Don't say 'click here'; not everyone will be clicking". Link an existing word or phrase in context.
While editing, use preview to check a link, and follow it by opening the page in another window. If that title does not seem to exist, do a quick search to find out whether that is really the case. The article may have a differently worded title, or the subject may be included in a separate section of an existing article.
Links should use the most precise target that arises in the context, even where that is merely a simple redirect to a less specific page title. Do not use a piped link to avoid otherwise legitimate redirect targets that fit well within the scope of the text. This assists in determining when a significant number of references to redirected links warrant more detailed articles. For example, link to "V8 engine" rather than "V8 engine".
Automated processes should not replace or pipe links to redirects. Instead, the link should always be examined in context. (For more information, see
Wikipedia:Disambiguation, Wikipedia:Redirect#Do not change links to redirects that are not broken, and Wikipedia:Redirects with possibilities.)
Red (internal) links
An internal link which shows up in red is one that points to a page that does not exist by that name. This may be because an article has not yet been created there; or because there is a misspelling or plural left inside the link brackets; or because an article on that topic has a different title and needs a redirect; or (even more commonly) an easy and intuitive piped link. An example would be red link, which can be easily changed via piped link to the correct red link. If a red link is within the context of the article, and it is a topic with the potential to eventually be a neutral, verifiable encyclopedia article, then the link should be kept as an invitation for an editor to begin the appropriate article with this title. Such links do not have an expiration date, beyond which they must be "fixed".
In short, many red links signify fixable problems, but others merely point to "buds" from which Wikipedia will grow in the future.
See the main article above for the guideline on these links.
Note that the color of such links depends on the settings of the individual Wikipedia reader, and red is only the default; a reader can change his or her personal style so this internal link class shows up in another color.
Dates
Where a date contains day, month, and year—[[25 March]] [[2004]]—or day and month—[[February 10]]—a link will permit the date preferences of the reader to operate. Day, month, and year must all be linked for the preference to work fully. Careful consideration of the disadvantages and advantages of the autoformatting mechanism should be made before applying it: the mechanism does not work for the vast majority of readers, i.e., unregistered users and registered users who have not made a setting, and can affect readability and appearance if there are already numerous high-value links in the text.
The Full date formatting section requires consistency in the raw date format within an article. If using the autoformatting mechanisms, check through all examples in the edit window to avoid such combinations as "[[July 4, 1776]]" and "[[1776-07-04]]" within the same article). In the main text of an article, autoformatting should be used either on none of the month-day and month-day-year dates, or all of them. Consider inserting a non-breaking space between month and day where autoformatting is not used (August 20 or 20 August, and August 20, 2003 or 20 August 2003).
Avoid piping links from "year" to "year something" or "something year" (e.g., [[1991 in music|1991]]) in the main prose of an article in most cases. Use an explicit cross-reference, e.g. ''(see [[1991 in music]])'', if it is appropriate to link a year to such an article at all. Exceptions include:
- Piped links may be useful in places where compact presentation is important (some tables, infoboxes and lists).
- Piped links may also be useful in the main prose of articles in which such links are used heavily, as is often the case with sportsperson biographies that link to numerous separate season articles.
In tables and infoboxes units, should not be internally linked to Wikipedia pages.
Capitalization
There is currently no rule prescribing whether one should write "See also Train" or "See also train" (and similar with a bulleted list), but in the case of multiple links, be consistent. Note again that that linking does not ever force use of an initial capital letter, so you can leave the initial letter lower case if you so desire, in the interest of readability.
Quotation
In general, do not include links in quotations; links can alter the form or emphasis of the original. Dates should never be linked in quoted material, because this will cause the quotation to be altered according to readers’ date-formatting preferences.
Intuitiveness
Keep piped links as intuitive as possible. Do not use piped links to create "easter egg links", that require the reader to follow them before understanding what's going on. Also remember that there are people who print the articles. For example, do not write this:
- ...and by mid-century the puns and sexual humor were (with only a few [[Thomas Bowdler|exceptions]]) back in to stay.
The readers will not see the hidden reference to Thomas Bowdler unless they click or hover over the piped exceptions link—in a print version, there is no link to select, and the reference is lost. Instead, reference the article explicitly by using a "see also" or by rephrasing:
- ...and by mid-century the puns and sexual humor were (with only a few exceptions; see [[Thomas Bowdler]]) back in to stay.
- ...and by mid-century the puns and sexual humor were back in to stay, [[Thomas Bowdler]] being an exception.
Similarly, use:
- After an earlier disaster (see Bombay Explosion (1944)),...
- "After the earlier explosion in Bombay,...
not
- After an earlier disaster,...
External links
Wikipedia is not a link collection and an article with only links is actively discouraged.
Syntax
The syntax for referencing a URL is simple. Just enclose it in single brackets:
[URL link title after space]
The URL must begin with http:// or another common protocol, such as ftp:// or news://.
In addition, putting URLs in plain text with no markup automatically produces a link, for example http://en.wikipedia.org/. However, this feature may disappear in a future release. Therefore, in cases where you wish to display the URL because it is intrinsically valuable information, it is better to use the short form of the URL (host name) as the optional text: [http://en.wikipedia.org/ external link A] produces external link A.
Link titles
You should not add a descriptive title to an embedded HTML link within an article. Instead, when giving an embedded link as a source within an article, simply enclose the URL in square brackets, like this: [1]. However, you should add a descriptive title when an external link is offered in the References, Further reading, or External links section. This is done by supplying descriptive text after the URL, separated by a space and enclosing it all in square brackets.
For example, to add a title to a bare URL such as http://en.wikipedia.org/ (this is rendered as "http://en.wikipedia.org/"), use the following syntax: [http://en.wikipedia.org/ an open-content encyclopedia] (this is rendered as "an open-content encyclopedia").
Generally, URLs are ugly and uninformative; it is better for a meaningful title to be displayed rather than the URL itself. For example, "European Space Agency website" is much more reader-friendly than "http://www.esa.int/export/esaCP/index.html". There may be exceptions where the URL is well known or is the company name. In this case, putting both the url and a valid title will be more informative: for example, "European Space Agency website, www.esa.int".
If the URL is displayed, make it as simple as possible; for example, if the index.html is superfluous, remove it (but be sure to check in preview mode first).
The "printable version" of a page displays all URLs in full, including those given a title, so no information is lost.
URLs as embedded (numbered) links
Without the optional text, external references appear as automatically numbered links: For example,
[http://en.wikipedia.org/]
is displayed like this:
When an embedded HTML link is used to provide an inline source in an article, a numbered link should be used after the punctuation, like this, [3] with a full citation given in the References section. See Wikipedia:Cite sources and Wikipedia:Verifiability for more information.
When placed in the References and External links sections, these links should be expanded with link text, and preferably a full citation, including the name of the article, the author, the journal or newspaper the article appeared in, the date it was published, and the date retrieved.
Position in article
Embedded links are positioned after the sentence or paragraph they are being used as a source for, and after the punctuation, like this. [4]
A full citation should then be added to the References section. Links not used as sources can be listed in the External links section:
==External links==*[http://*[http://
As with other top-level headers, two equal signs should be used to markup the external links header (see Headings elsewhere in the article).
If there is a dispute on the position of an embedded link, consider organizing alphabetically.
See Wikipedia:Citing_sources#Embedded_links for how to format these, and Wikipedia:Verifiability, which is policy.
Non-English-language sites
Webpages in English are highly preferred. Linking to non-English pages may still be useful for readers in the following cases:
- when the website is the subject of the article
- when linking to pages with maps, diagrams, photos, tables (explain the key terms with the link, so that people who do not know the language can interpret them)
- when the webpage contains key or authoritative information found on no English-language site and is used as a citation (or when translations on English-language sites are not authoritative).
In such cases, indicate what language the site is in. For example:
You can also indicate the language by putting a language icon after the link. This is done using Template:Languageicon by typing {{Languageicon|<language code>|<language name>}}. Alternatively, type {{xx icon}}, where xx is the language code. See Category:Language icons for a list of these templates and the list of ISO 639 codes.
File type
If the link is not to an HTML file, identify the file type. Useful templates are available: {{PDFlink}}, {{DOClink}}, {{RTFlink}}. If a browser plugin is required to view to the file, mention that as well.
File size
If the link is to a large file (in the case of HTML, including the images), a note about that is useful. Someone with a slow connection may decide not to use it.
Alternative styles of link
Links to articles in other Wikimedia Foundation projects such as Wiktionary and Wikiquote can be done with special link templates such as Template:Wikiquote. These will display as a blue box with a logo. Similar templates exist for some free content resources that are not run by the Wikimedia Foundation. These boxes are formatted in light green to distinguish them from Wikipedia's official sister projects. A list of such templates can be found at Wikipedia:List of templates linking to other free content projects.
