Wikipedia:Signature tutorial

This is an information page.

It is not an encyclopedic article, nor one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines; rather, its purpose is to explain certain aspects of Wikipedia's norms, customs, technicalities, or practices. It may reflect differing levels of consensus and vetting.

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WP:SIGTUT

Your signature, left on talk pages, is usually the first thing seen by users who meet you for the first time. As a result, many users choose to customise their signature, or 'sig'. These changes can vary from providing a link to your contributions page to completely redesigning the entire signature. This page will attempt to provide some helpful tips and advice for producing a unique signature.

Be sure to comply with WP:SIGAPP, a Wikipedia policy, which says "Your signature must not blink, scroll, or otherwise cause inconvenience to or annoy other editors."

Note that changing your signature will not change signatures that have already been produced, only ones that are created after save has been clicked.

Also note that the basics to changing the background of signatures is included on the Wikipedia:Signatures page (though more in-depth instructions are soon to follow)

UserBob currently has a very simple signature:

UserBob (talk) 22:04, 11 February 2024 (UTC).

As a result, he would like to produce a more complicated signature.

Nickname

Latest comment: 9 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

The easiest way to customise your signature is to change the 'Signature' section of the user profile preferences. This changes the name shown to other users to the new nickname.

For example, if UserBob typed "Bob" into the 'Signature' section of his preferences page and clicked 'save' (making sure the box marked "Raw signature" is not selected), his signature would change to

Bob (talk) 22:04, 11 February 2024 (UTC).

Note that it still links to User:UserBob, but says "Bob". This is useful if you no longer like your name, but don't want it changed altogether. However, it is good practice to have your nickname related in an obvious way to your real username; if UserBob chose the nickname "Jenkinson", this would be confusing, since other users would have no idea who "Jenkinson" was, even if UserBob's real name is Jenkinson.

Contributions pages

Latest comment: 9 months ago3 comments1 person in discussion

UserBob would like to link his signature to his contributions page. To do this, he needs to produce a 'Raw Signature'.

To create a link to your contributions page, click on My Preferences. In the Signature heading, there is a checkbox labeled Treat the above as wiki markup. Check this box, and then type into the "Signature" field:

[[User:(your name)|(your name)]] ([[User talk:(your name)|talk]]) ([[Special:Contributions/(your name)|contribs]])

and click "Save".

For example, if UserBob types

[[User:UserBob|UserBob]] ([[User talk:UserBob|talk]]) ([[Special:Contributions/UserBob|contribs]])

then his signature would become

UserBob (talk) (contribs) 22:04, 11 February 2024 (UTC).

These can be changed to use any other text. For example, [[User:UserBob|Bob]] [[User talk:UserBob|Chat]] [[Special:Contributions/UserBob|Tribs]], which would make

Bob Chat Tribs 22:04, 11 February 2024 (UTC).

Some users "hide" their talk page and/or contributions links; they are there, but are not labelled.

User Bob 22:04, 11 February 2024 (UTC).

This looks like the plain UserBob, but clicking on "Bob" leads to his talk page, as the code for it shows: [[User:UserBob|User]][[User talk:UserBob|Bob]].

To find these, hover your mouse over different parts of the signature. The status bar at the bottom of your web browser should show you where each bit of the signature leads.

Getting colorful...

Latest comment: 9 months ago2 comments1 person in discussion

See WP:Manual of Style/Accessibility/CSS colors for text on white and WP:Colour contrast for advice on choosing colors that are accessible to people with color blindness or other conditions.

UserBob doesn't much like the color blue, and decides to produce a more colorful signature.

In order to produce a signature with colors other than blue (or red), you'll need to use a bit of HTML, specifically the tag.

If I put at the start of some text , all the text I write turns darkgreen. Note that the text will not turn back into black until I type .

Bob wants a darkgreen and maroon signature, so he types [[User:UserBob|UserBob]] ([[User talk:UserBob|talk]]), producing

UserBob (talk) 22:04, 11 February 2024 (UTC).

He can even use different colors in the same part. For example, [[User:UserBob|UserBob]] ([[User talk:UserBob|talk]]) produces

UserBob (talk) 22:04, 11 February 2024 (UTC).

Note that "User" and "Bob" are now different colors.

Also, some users don't use a white background; many users prefer light-colored text on a dark background and may have enabled the Gadget "Use a black background with green text on the Monobook skin". So, if you specify foreground colors, you should consider specifying background colors as well.

If you want to manually edit colors, as so;  everything typed becomes highlighted blue, and is in white text.

But, we know UserBob doesn't much like the color blue, so he chooses the colors greenyellow (for the text) and maroon (for the background). Therefore, [[User:UserBob|UserBob]] ([[User talk:UserBob|talk]]) produces:

UserBob (talk)

But wait, the talk is displayed in blue with no highlight! The reason is simple, the text to be entered into preferences must include the  tag before the [[User:UserBob|UserBob]] linking. Also, due to the fact that UserBob is displayed as a link, the color change must be included in the area of the link.

That would look something like this: [[User:UserBob|UserBob]] [[User talk:UserBob|(talk)]] in order to produce:

UserBob (talk)

To increase the space around the text, use the css padding properties, where the padding sequence numbers are top right bottom left: [[User:UserBob|UserBob]] [[User talk:UserBob|(talk)]], which produces:

UserBob (talk)

In order to make your signature look more original, you can change its font: [[User:UserBob|UserBob]] [[User talk:UserBob|(talk)]] to Georgia:

UserBob (talk)

or even more unusual one: [[User:UserBob|UserBob]] [[User talk:UserBob|(talk)]] (i.e. Blackadder ITC):

UserBob (talk)

Note: The maximum length for a signature or underlying raw signature code is 255 characters including spaces. This may limit your ability to create more complex signatures. See WP:SIGLENGTH.

Fine tuning

UserBob is reasonably happy with his signature. However, there are still many other ways to alter a signature. The most commonly used are: adding ^, _, '''bold''', ''italics'' and for special effects, and using special unicode symbols, such as ☯, ☺ and ★.

Some users may have other links in their signature. For example, Esperanza members had a green "e", which linked straight to Wikipedia:Esperanza. So, if UserBob had joined Esperanza, his signature might have changed like so:

[[User:UserBob|<span style="color: purple">Us</span>]][[WP:EA|<span style="color: green">'''''e'''''</span>]][[User:UserBob|<span style="color: purple">r</span><span style="color: green">Bob</span>]] [[User talk:UserBob|<span style="color: maroon">(talk)</span>]]

Us e rBob (talk)

Don'ts

Don't do it...

Tempting as it may be, there are some things that should not be done, as they annoy editors or increase server load. These include:

Using pictures in your signature

Us e rBob (talk)

Big signatures

Us e rBob (talk)

Blinking signatures (most modern browsers will not display blinking text anyway)

Us e rBob (talk)

Signatures that include line breaks

Us e rBob
(talk)

Or any mix of the above!

Us e rBob
(talk)

Real-life examples

Latest comment: 1 month ago132 comments131 people in discussion

Here are some actual signatures contributed by actual editors. Edit this section to see the code for each. Feel free to share your own creation! One per customer, please. If you change your signature, replace your entry instead of adding a second one. (Do not add someone else's signature, no matter how interesting it is.) For more examples, see this gallery.

... tags were deprecated in HTML 4.0 and are unsupported in HTML5. This means that the popular browsers may drop support for them at any time. If your signature uses these tags, we ask that you remove them before adding your signature here. See existing examples below for how to achieve the same effect using ... and CSS properties. For more information, see this talk page discussion (it is an archived discussion and should not be continued there).

w.carter-Talk 13:45, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

~Helicopter Llama~ 15:43, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

ΤheQ Editor ^Talk? 15:55, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 21:11, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

Brandon (MrWooHoo) • Talk to Brandon! 03:12, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

- Cwobeel (talk) 22:09, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Darylgolden^(talk) 09:28, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Romtam^TalkToMe 15:00, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

Sounder Bruce 01:56, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

--Chamith (talk) 11:10, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

-- Orduin ^⋠T⋡ 23:04, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

PamD 16:51, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

Ochilov (talk) 15:57, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

aGastya ✉ let’s talk about it :) 17:09, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

― Padenton|✉ 08:09, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

--♥Jewel-chanXOXO♥talk 09:54, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

-- adu ♣ Let's chat 7:49, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

SONIC678|Hang out with me! 17:26, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

MangoStone14^{Let's interview} 08:15, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

~ NottNott talk|contrib 18:26, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

White Arabian Filly (Neigh) 19:57, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

_themidget17 ● blah blah blah 05:27, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Tom29739 ^[talk] 20:21, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

—D'Ranged 1 | VT^alk : 00:44, 26 February 2016 (UTC) (The maroon and orange colors and stylized VT are references to my alma mater, VA Tech)

{{u|Checkingfax}} {Talk} 12:59, 27 February 2016 (UTC) ‍—‌(Had to get creative to be able to include curly braces and pipes within my signature. This sigstyle allows other editors to copy/paste my sig to {{ping}} me.)

—{{u|Goldenshimmer}}|✝️|ze/zer|😹|T/C|☮️|John15:12|🍂 20:28, 1 June 2016 (UTC) (Includes Checkingfax's idea that's right above mine, cause it's AWESOME :) )

Natalie Desautels _{…as within, so without} 21:34, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

• Balch^Mike ^⋠talk⋡ 22:05, 25 July 2016 (UTC)

MediaKill13 (talk) 06:52, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

Level3Sentry ❯❯❯ Talk 01:06, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

— Gestrid (talk) 02:04, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

{{u|Gamall ^Wednesday _Ida}} 19:05, 12 October 2016 (UTC) (Compact, "pingable" signature for long username, with userpage/talk/contribs links.)

JackOfPanTrades | Card Hunter ^{(Converse intellectually)} 19:49, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

―Mandruss ☎ 20:52, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Deepro^#mylifeas713 ❯❯❯ Wanna chat? 07:56, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

♠Dinah♠ 🎤 15:55, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

BrandonALF ^talk ^edits 23:59, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

jd22292 (Jalen D. Folf) (talk) 03:30, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

SpiritPrince📞 21:26, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

^いくらBraden1127 _イクラꅇ 6:55, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

DeniedClub ^{❯❯❯ talk?} 07:46, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

-- Midgetmore ☀ |(talk to me) 13:05, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

HunterM267 ^talk 03:18, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

REALMMB ^(talk) 07:53, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

Thegooduser Let's Chat (See my contributions) 01:55, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

YoloMaxi Leave a Message! 01:20, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

~ White^Paw 13:45, 14 July 2018 (UTC) (still figuring it out)

Dannyyankee12_{let's talk} 16:15, 15 July 2018 (UTC)

Oshawott 12 ==()== Talk to me! 03:11, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 18:00, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

PorkchopGMX (talk with me - what i've done) 19:14, 3 January 2019 (UTC)

TruthToBeSpoken (talk) 20:37, 22 January 2019 (UTC)

Tsumikiria⧸ 🌹🌉 04:05, 28 January 2019 (UTC) ←Install the beautiful Lato font or import in your commons.css for best experience. Used the special character ⧸ to stylize and avoid breaking line width.

―Vancian | 💬📜 20:22, 1 March 2019 (UTC) ←Looks best with the Lobster font.

Mooeena ● 💌 ● ✒️ ● ❓ 03:56, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

Akbermamps ^talk 01:05, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

Genius Editor ^{(Talk • Contribs)} 15:09, 16 June 2019 (UTC)

LewisTehMinerz💬✒️ 20:39, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

― Re_a^l_C^yGuy - ^Talk? 23:22, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

Clovermoss (talk) 16:44, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

— B. L. I. R. • C 21:48, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

James3141592 talk 01:27, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

Kaweendra (talk) 14:53, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

aurora :3 leave a message 17:09, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

{{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 18:28, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

WBPchur ^{💬●✒️●💛} 09:24, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

𝄞: JohnnyB𝄬 ^{^𝅘𝅥𝅮 Sing with me^𝅘𝅥𝅮} 03:13, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

Eladar ^{(chat with me)} 23:39, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

--NGC 54 (talk | contribs) 16:05, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

— J947 ^[cont] 06:15, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

—Wei4Earth (talk, contribs) 19:27, 9 May 2020 (UTC)
This signature is 206 characters long and 208 bytes large under the 255-character limit for signatures (WP:SIGLEN guideline). It is compliant with the WCAG 2.0 AA level following Wikipedia's Manual of Style (MOS:COLOR guideline). For a list of my other signatures, see User:Wei4Earth/signature.

✥Sailawen✥ ^{(Chat? ♠ My stuff...)} 16:15, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

Squeeps10 ^{Talk to me}_{My edits} 02:59, 14 May 2020 (UTC) It's not as fancy as some of the ones above me but it's unique as far as I can tell.

Wikiffeine •_• 00:02, 23 June 2020 (UTC) Also not as fancy, but I think the •_• sets it apart.

DougInAMugtalk 00:02, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

NASCAR Enthusiast_nyoom 21:33, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

FlowerPetals 📪 19:58, 17 September 2020 (UTC) My current signature, with some lovely dark colors with flowery script that pulls everything together.

Enjoyer of World (talk) 13:23, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Heart ^(talk) 03:32, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Deditus Particulo ^{Write to me} 15:51, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

CycloneYoris ^talk! 10:16, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

— MrConorAE ^{(👤U | 💬T | 📝C)} 03:55, 24 November 2020 (UTC) Uses  to make the "menu". Single-letter alternative links, for those that do not support emojis.

DeepGlow²⁰⁰⁹ (talk • contribs) 05:42, 24 November 2020‎ (UTC)

🦠🌀𝕾𝖚𝖕𝖊𝖗 𝕮𝖞𝖈𝖑𝖔𝖓𝖎𝖈 𝕾𝖙𝖔𝖗𝖒 𝕮𝖔𝖗𝖔𝖓𝖆🌀🦠 15:38, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

Cheesetron246 talk 17:58, 7 December 2020 (UTC) Includes a white background to make sure colors comply with MOS:COLOR

GMXping! 03:30, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

SnazzyInfinity (chat? • what I've done) 05:10, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

Idell (talk) 12:40, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

ScienceFan66 (talk) 17:07, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

D|Fletcher|0306 ^{Need me for something?} 19:31, 15 January 2021 (UTC)

— qaisjp^{(talk) (contribs)} 23:23, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

🌳QuercusOak🍂 22:11, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

Coding Cyclone ^{[citation needed]} 01:10, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

-- Manasbose ^{(talk | edits)} 04:47, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

Bsoyka ✉ 15:17, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

Robingunes; 21:17, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

Zai talk 17:49, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

02:24, 13 June 2021 (UTC) TOA The owner of all ☑️

BACA ^{(talk to me)} 18:18, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

— Pamphylian ● 💬 21:10, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

Waddles 🗩 🖉 16:48, 18 August 2021 (UTC) It took a few tries to get it to work properly, but I finally got it!

Dinosaur TrexXX33 (chat?) 12:17, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

TootsieRollsAddict (talk) 07:41, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 16:32, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

—GξrЇnΔѦ JѲy‎^(флуд) 15:12, 27 December 2021 (UTC) Hey, whatsup!My experience over my signature:)

CertifiedAmazing2 wanna chat? 22:42, 21 January 2022 (UTC) First signature of 2022!

Castlepalace 13:15, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

—Mythdon (talk • contribs) 19:19, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

P h y s e t e r s^✉ 23:51, 11 April 2022 (UTC) Thanks to Purplewowies & ColinFine for their help!

QuinticFormula 🏳️‍🌈 (talk) 03:38, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

_signed,511KeV ^(talk) 07:52, 30 April 2022 (UTC)

Myndex talk 11 May 2022

— Urban Versis 32^KB ⚡ ^{(talk | contribs)} 19:53, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

ARandomPage (talk • contribs) 00:59, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

Kpddg ^(talk) 15:03, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

Angerxiety ^{the ediot} (chat? ⋅ contribs ~~to society~~) 5:08, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

D_2h⌬ 22:11, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

phrogge 'sup? edits 02:56, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

ballads^one 05:18, 22 April 2023 (UTC)

-Asheiou (they/them • talk) 16:10, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

— Will • B ^[talk] 05:52, 14 May 2023 (UTC)

Grumpylawnchair (talk) 18:54, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

-- ZooBlazer^talk 19:51, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

SilverLocust 💬 22:49, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

CHÓ VÀNG HÀI HƯỚC 🗣️ 13:34, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

👤^{📝📖🔬🧪} 08:50, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

Darcyisverycute (talk) 06:05, 10 December 2023 (UTC) (trying to stand out by using modestly rotated text, although it was hard to fit in the 255 char markup limit. There seems no existing policy on this approach, but I try to make the rotation small enough to not increase line spacing.)

adamfra@enwiki:~/talk$ 01:56, 31 January 2024 (UTC) you might recognize this design if you use pop!_os

$Jayhawker6$ 【💬】 03:17, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

'''[[User:CanonNi]]''' (talk • contribs) 08:40, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

{{u|Sa An Ke}} 21:38, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

💥Casualty ^{• Hop along. •} 01:18, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

Huggums^{537_voted! (sign🖋️|📞talk)} 16:28, 3 June 2024 (UTC) The voting poll discussion resulted in this abridged version.

— Alien 3
3 3 17:54, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

A. Astronomy ♥【💬】 14:11, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

dotXK 12:56, 14 October 2024 (UTC) (based off the flag of Kosovo)

G o m m e h 19:35, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

Helpful links

Web colors lists most usable colors
Help:Wikitext is a general guide to wikitext