Wiki Team/Guide/Overview

Quick Summary of Wiki Markup in a Nutshell

These are the basics you need to know to get started. The rest you'll learn as you go along.


  • Just type. Whatever text you type will show up in the body of the page.
  • Leaving a blank line will start a new paragraph
  • You can use HTML for formatting (like changing fonts or making lists), but not for links.
  • Enclosing a word or term in double square brackets makes a link to an article on that topic in the wiki. Example: [[glitch]] produces glitch
  • To make a link with specific text enclose with single square brackets the URL followed by a space and then the link text. Example: [http://www.ligo-wa.caltech.edu LIGO Hanford Observatory] produces LIGO Hanford Observatory
  • Use "=" as quotes to indicate sections, subsections, etc, like this:
 ==Section Title==
 ===Subsection title===
 ====sub-subsection title====

The equal signs must start at the beginning of the line for this to work. The more "="'s the more "sub" the section. You can also use HTML header tags for sections.

  • Any line which starts with a space will be shown in a box
 like this.

This is useful for examples or for statements you want to stand out, or for code examples. It's also bothersome when done accidentally.

  • Preview as you go, to see how it looks. Preview often.
  • Don't forget to save! You can get used to editing and previewing over and over again and forget to save your changes.
  • A good way to learn new things is to edit pages which already exist to see how it's done.


Remember, "wiki" means "quickly" in Hawaiian, and that is why they called this a wiki -- because you can learn to edit quickly.