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How to Format Text on a Wiki Page
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Wiki-Syntax Text

On this page, you'll learn how to format text on Wiki pages and other area that support Wiki formatting (including articles, forums, and blogs).

The Markup Language Wiki-Syntax

The markup language used on a Wiki page is most commonly called Wiki Syntax. It uses common characters in uncommon ways (or character combinations that are not normally used together) and provides them with a special meaning. Some of the character combinations only work at the beginning of a line, while others can be inserted anywhere in the text and are active until they are turned off.

Wiki-Syntax uses a character repeated twice for most functions, but it also has a few 2-character combinations. With a 2-character combination, the characters are reversed when the function is turned off. MonoSpaced Text provides a good example of this; the Minus (-) and Plus (+) characters are used to start the using MonoSpaced Text and a Plus (+) and Minus (-) characters specifies the end of it.

The following sections explain most of this.

Quick Reference - Basic Text Formatting

Desired Formatting Syntax Result Since
Bold __text__ text
Centered ::text::
text
Color Font ~~blue:text~~ text
Italic ''text'' text
Monospaced -+text+- text
Underlined ===text=== text
Text box ^text^
text
Deleted --text-- text 3.0
Display syntax ~np~__not bold__~/np~ __not bold__


Basic Text Formatting

The Wiki-Syntax given in this section can be located anywhere in the text so that specific characters, words, or sentences can be emphasized.

Color Font

Text can be any color you want it to be. Two Tildes (~) are used followed by the name of a color and a Colon (:) to specify the start of the Colored Text. Two other Tildes (~) are used to end the Colored Text.

Example: ~~red:This text is Red~~ produces:
This text is Red


Color font can also be specified using HTML colors. HTML colors use 3 pairs of Hex numbers; one for Red, Blue, & Green so that 00 00 00 would produce white. The syntax is two Tildes (~) followed by the Pound (#) character and the Hex Numbers with a Colon (:) followed by the text to be colored. Two Tildes (~) mark the end of the Colored Text.

Example: ~~#ff00ff:This text is the color Magenta ~~ produces:
This text is the color Magenta


As of 3.0, the syntax was enhanced to also support background color changing.
Example: ~~blue,yellow:This text is blue with yellow background~~
This text is blue with yellow background

(click the [+] to open)

Web-Safe HTML Colors

[+]

Bold Text

Two Underscore (_) characters are used to make text Bold.

Example: __This Text is Bold__ produces:
This Text is Bold


Italic Text

Two Single Quote (') characters are used to make text Italic.

Example: ''This Text is Italic'' produces:
This Text is Italic


Underlined Text

Three Equal (=) characters are used to underline text.

Example: ===This Text is Underlined=== produces:
This Text is Underlined


Strikethrough text


Example:
--This text uses strikethrough--
produces:
This text uses strikethrough.





Centered Text

Two Colon (:) characters are used to Center text. The Centered Text can be centered within a Box, a Table, or almost anything else.

Example: ::This Text is Centered:: produces:
This Text is Centered


Monospaced Text for Code

Monospaced Text is useful when displaying Code and can be created in two ways. The easiest is to start a new line with one or more spaces. The Minus (-) and Plus (+) character combination can also be used to specify a Monospaced Text. See also PluginMono for another way to apply the Monospace font.

Example: -+This Text uses a Monospaced Font+- produces:
This Text uses a Monospaced Font

Image If using a Monospaced Font, be sure to keep the line length short. If the lines are too long, they will push the right column out of the browser display area.
exclaim The Leading Space Monospaced Font is disabled on many sites.

Superscript and subscript

Use the {TAG} plugin (also see PluginTag).

Example:
This text is {TAG(tag=>sup)}super{TAG} script.
produces:
This text is super script.

This text is {TAG(tag=>sub)}sub{TAG} script.
produces:
This text is sub script.


Image Another alternative is to use the {SUB} and {SUP} plugins which are documented at PluginSub and PluginSup.

Text box

Apply one caret at start and end of text to be in a box.

Example: ^This Text is in a box^ produces:

This Text is in a box


NOTE: This CSS style is called "simplebox" and may look different or may not exist, depending on your theme CSS.

Plain Text

To turn off tiki formatting, surround your text with 'np' a.k.a. 'no processing' tags

Example: ~np~This ''text'' is __not__ being ===formatted===~/np~ produces:

This ''text'' is __not__ being ===formatted===

NOTE: np tags cannot be used within an np block. To display an unprocessed ~np~ tag, escape all the characters (not just the tildes) while in normal processing mode:

~126~~110~~112~~126~ produces: ~np~
~126~~47~~110~~112~~126~ produces: ~/np~

Headings

Headings are formed by starting the line with one, two, or three exclamation marks ("!", "!!", or "!!!").

Note regarding customizing the appearance of headings: If you need to change the CSS property of a heading in the wikitext (by editing the theme stylesheet), be aware that a heading labeled "h1" (made with one exclamation point) is actually an HTML h2 heading, h2 is actually an HTML h3, and so on.

This is because, consistent with semantic layout, there should be only one h1 heading on a page, so in Tiki h1 is reserved for the page title. Although it may seem confusing to map the heading sizes down one level this way, it was decided as better than labeling the wikitext headings something like h2 to h5, with h1 apparently missing.

So to change the appearance of a wikipage's "h2" headings for example, actually it is the h3 selector in the stylesheet that needs to be edited (or .wikitext h3, if the theme has rules for wikitext headings in addition to default heading rules).

Numbered Headings

In tiki 2.0 and above, you can create numbered headings using a combination of the ! and # characters
  • !# My Heading will produce "1.0 My Heading"
  • !!# My Secondary Heading will produce "1.1 My Secondary Heading"
  • !!!# My Tertiary Heading will produce "1.1.1 My Tertiary Heading"
See: Headings

LineBreak (forced)

Basic WIKI markup language don't include "linebreak" element.
Nevertheless with TIKI you can use special command to force linebreaks into a text :
line break code (%%%), like so:
;:text %%% text %%% text
will look like this:
text
text
text

Indent

Indent is formed by the combination of the ; and : characters. ; must appear at the beginning of a line and : must appear between introduction text and the indented text. The introduction text portion is useful for forming definition type indention like Example 1 below. However the introduction text can be eliminated by simply including ;: together followed by the text as shown in Example 2.

Example 1:
;Intro Text: First example of indented text
produces:
Intro Text
First example of indented text

Example 2:
;:2nd example of indented text
2nd example of indented text


Using Square Brackets

If you wish to include square brackets in your text (i.e. as regular text and not a link) simply add an additional open bracket to start. E.g.

[[this would not be a link]

Would render like this...

[this would not be a link]

Non-breaking space

Use ~hs~ to add the HTML "Â " for a non-breaking space.

Comments

Wiki Comments

~tc~ this is a tiki comment ~/tc~
Will be kept in the Wiki source file but not seen when the HTML page is generated or HTML page source is viewed.

HTML Comments

~hc~ this is an HTML comment ~/hc~
Will be kept in the Wiki source file and will generate an HTML comment of the form
<!-- this is an HTML comment -->
An HTML comment will not be seen when the page is viewed but will be seen when the HTML page source is viewed.


noparse - not parsing WikiSyntax

If you want to writethis: __''any text''__
instead of that: any text
you need to write the "noparse" tag: ~np~

~np~__''any text''__~/np~


Displaying code

You enter code blocks by enclosing the block between
{CODE()} and {CODE}
.
This is a WikiPlugin, which extends the WikiSyntax.

To Indent a Text Block

Enclose text in a blockquote using HTML to indent a section / block of text.
<blockquote>
text
text
text
</blockquote>
This will display as:
text
text
text

You can also use the indent code (;:), and line break code (%%%), like so:
;:text %%% text %%% text



Contributors to this page: Torsten Fabricius1845 points  , RandyH234 points  , lindon132 points  , haitrinh1592 , louis2609 , Bernard TREMBLAY487 points  , Gary Cunningham-Lee1539 points  , meta4r43 points  , thebookdoc124 points  , Marc Laporte9140 points  , sylvie7387 points  , Louis-Philippe Huberdeau1046 puntos  , jordxn2 points  , rosinalippi6 points  , dthacker1483 points  , dclaar3 points  , Nelson810 points  , fivos88 puntos  , wiki_newbie2 points  , mlpvolt4388 points  , Tobias_Bergemann2 points  , Rick22958 points  , mstovenour4 points  , irq34 points  , Fabián Rodríguez6 points  , jasondiceman5 points  , luciash d' being2160 points  , Franck Martin97 points  , StarRider1 points  , Damian Parker14 points  and Philippe Cloutier1008 points  .
Page last modified on Tuesday 24 April, 2012 17:18:50 UTC by Torsten Fabricius1845 points .
The content on this page is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.

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