Help:Editing

From go.org.nz

The basics

The bare essential points of editing are:

• Click the "Edit" link.
• Type in the edit box, much the same as in any wordprocessing program.
  • For a new paragraph, you need a complete blank line OR a line starting with either a colon (which produces an indent) or an asterisk (which produces a bullet).
• Hit "Save"

That's all the basics.

Fractionally more adventurous things

Other effects may be achieved very quickly if you can see a toolbar (row of little boxes) just above the edit box. But here are the slow ways of doing the most important:

• Double square brackets around any word or phrase create an internal jump-link to a page with that name (whether or not one exists). Please use them for any word or phrase that you think should have an article.
• Italic is achieved by putting two apostrophes at each end of the word or phrase;
  three each end makes it bold (and note that the first appearance of the page title in the article text should be bold);
  five makes it both.
• Headings (as above) are made by typing two or three or four "equals" signs in front of the word or phrase and the same number after it. There are several advantages in doing it that way instead of typing apostrophes for bold text, one being that headings automatically create a table of contents from which a reader can click to go direct to the desired heading.

Summarise, preview, and save

When all looks good enough:

1. add a few words of explanation in the "Summary:" line
2. hit the "Show preview" button
3. edit further if desired, then if really OK hit the "Save page" button.

More detail

Full explanations of how to edit and navigate can be found on the main English Wikipedia and related pages, eg:

• Tutorial
• Tutorial section explaining "Talk" pages
• Images and other uploads

Experimenting

If you want to experiment with editing, play in the sandbox for a while until familiar with the basics.