User:Dcljr/Characters

Please do not edit this page. Comments should go on my talk page. Thanks.

Characters interpreted as markup

The characters below have special meanings as wiki (or HTML) markup anywhere they occur in the course of regular text. To make the symbols themselves appear in the text of a page, you can use the corresponding character entities (e.g., "&") or numeric codes ("&"). For most, you can also use the special markup "<nowiki>", which is preferred in Wikipedia articles since future editors can then see the target character in the page source. (The use of character entities and numeric codes should probably be restricted to Talk pages and User pages, where your text will generally not be edited by others.)

Character	Name	Meaning as markup	Markup only when	Non-markup options
`&`	ampersand	begin character entity or numeric code	subsequent text defines valid character reference	`&` or `&`
`'`	apostrophe	begin italics, bold, or bold-italics	at least 2 in a row	`'` or `<nowiki>'</nowiki>` ¹
`<`	less-than sign	begin HTML or HTML-like tag	subsequent text defines legal HTML/wiki tag	`<` or `<`
`[`	left square bracket	begin link	subsequent text defines legal link	`[` or `<nowiki>[</nowiki>`
`{`	left curly brace	begin template reference or variable interpolation ²	at least 2 in a row	`{` or `<nowiki>{</nowiki>`
`~`	tilde	begin signature	at least 3 in a row	`~` or `<nowiki>~</nowiki>`

¹ Use of the entity "'" is not recommended.

² For another use of the left curly brace character, see the next section.

Thanks to Patrick for pointing out a mistake in my original table.

Markup at the beginning of a line

The following characters have special meanings as wiki markup only when positioned as the first character on a line. Again, to get the character itself to appear, use the numeric reference, character entity or "<nowiki>".

Character	Name	Meaning as markup	Non-markup options
	space	pre-formatted line	`` or `<nowiki> </nowiki>` ¹
`#`	number sign	numbered list item	`#` or `<nowiki>#</nowiki>`
`*`	asterisk	bulleted list item	`` or `<nowiki></nowiki>`
`-`	hyphen	begin horizontal rule (4 in a row)	`-` or `<nowiki>-</nowiki>`
`:`	colon	indented line ²	`:` or `<nowiki>:</nowiki>`
`;`	semicolon	definition list item	`;` or `<nowiki>;</nowiki>`
`=`	equals sign	begin section heading	`=` or `<nowiki>=</nowiki>`
`{`	left curly brace	begin table (if followed by \| ) ³	`{` or `<nowiki>{</nowiki>`

¹ The use of a space as the first character on a line is discouraged, but if you must have it you should probably use " " or " " to get a non-breaking space (more browsers understand the numeric form).

² Within definition lists, a colon has a different meaning as markup; see definition lists below.

³ For other uses of left curly braces, see the previous section.

Note also that in table markup, other characters (and sequences of characters) have special meanings. See tables.