Help:Editing

The basics
The bare essential points of editing are:
 * 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). Doubling those characters gives extra indent.

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 "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.

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
We are planning a page called Help:Formatting to cover advanced things like tables, colors/colours, and whatever else we can think of. Until that's well under way, other MediaWiki sites should be consulted:


 * 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


 * For Wikia-specific information about how to edit, please see the Wikia Central tutorial, especially the section on editing.

Practice/practise?
If you'd like to try out the editing feature or practice some formatting techniques, please do it in the sandbox or your User page (or a subpage of it), rather than in an article.