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Coding Your Article
All Wikipedia pages are created with a special markup language, similar to the Web's HTML language. This Wiki Markup Language (WML), also known as the Wikitext language, uses special codes and characters to create specific types of formatting. For example, there's a special code that creates a section header and another code that inserts an image into the article. You have to know the codes to edit any article.
Fortunately, you can use the formatting toolbar above the editing box to automatically insert certain codes into an article. This is a lot easier than inserting WML commands manually. For example, to italicize a piece of text, select the text in the editing box and then click the Italic Text button. There are buttons on the toolbar for basic formatting and for inserting links, pictures, tables, and other more sophisticated page elements.
Of course, you gain more control over the article when you insert codes manually into the article's text. To do this, you need to have a basic understanding of the Wiki Markup Language and how it works.
Most WML commands are inserted between dual square brackets, like this: [[command]]. Some commands are enclosed between "on" and "off" angle brackets, similar to HTML tags, like this: <command>text</command>.
We'll look at some of the most popular WML commands next.