{{blockquote|<poem>
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore
            Meant in croaking "Nevermore."
</poem>}}

1. In hyphenated personal names (John Lennard-Jones, Omar al-Bashir).
2. To link prefixes with their main terms in certain constructions (quasi-scientific, pseudo-Apollodorus, ultra-nationalistic).
   • A hyphen may be used to distinguish between homographs (re-dress means dress again, but redress means remedy or set right).
   • There is a clear trend to join both elements in all varieties of English (subsection, nonlinear). Hyphenation clarifies when the letters brought into contact are the same (non-negotiable, sub-basement) or are vowels (pre-industrial), or where a word is uncommon (co-proposed, re-target) or may be misread (sub-era, not subera). Some words of these sorts are nevertheless common without the hyphen (e.g., cooperation is more frequently attested than co-operation in contemporary English).
3. To link related terms in compound modifiers:
   • Hyphens can aid ease of reading (that is, they can be ease-of-reading aids) and are particularly useful in long noun phrases: gas-phase reaction dynamics. But never insert a hyphen into a proper name (Middle Eastern cuisine, not Middle-Eastern cuisine).
   • A hyphen can help to disambiguate (some short-story writers are quite tall; a government-monitoring program is a program that monitors the government, whereas a government monitoring program is a government program that monitors).
   • Compounds that are hyphenated when used attributively (adjectives before the nouns they qualify: a light-blue handbag, a 34-year-old woman) or substantively (as a noun: she is a 34-year-old) are usually not hyphenated when used predicatively (descriptive phrase separated from the noun: the handbag was light blue, the woman is 34 years old). Where there would otherwise be a loss of clarity, however, a hyphen may be used in the predicative form as well (hand-fed turkeys, the turkeys were hand-fed). Awkward attributive hyphenation can sometimes be avoided with a simple rewording: Hawaiian-native species → native Hawaiian species.
   • Avoid using a hyphen after a standard -ly adverb (a newly available home, a wholly owned subsidiary) unless part of a larger compound (a slowly-but-surely strategy). In rare cases, a hyphen can improve clarity if a rewritten alternative is awkward, but rewording is usually preferable: The idea was clearly stated enough can be disambiguated as The idea clearly was stated often enough or The idea was stated with enough clarity.
   • A few words ending in -ly function as both adjectives and adverbs (a kindly-looking teacher; a kindly provided facility). Some such dual-purpose words (like early, only, northerly) are not standard -ly adverbs, because they are not formed by addition of -ly to an independent current-English adjective. These need careful treatment: Early flowering plants appeared around 130 million years ago, but Early-flowering plants risk damage from winter frosts; only child actors (no adult actors) but only-child actors (actors without siblings).
   • A hyphen is normally used when the adverb well precedes a participle used attributively (a well-meaning gesture; but normally a very well managed firm, because well itself is modified) and even predicatively, if well is necessary to, or alters, the sense of the adjective rather than simply intensifying it (the gesture was well-meaning, the child was well-behaved, but the floor was well polished).
   • In some cases, such as diode–transistor logic, the independent status of the linked elements requires an en dash instead of a hyphen. See § Dashes.
   • Shortcuts

     • MOS:SUSPENDED
     • MOS:HANGING
     Use a suspended hyphen (also called a hanging hyphen) when two compound modifiers are separated (two- and three-digit numbers; a ten-car or -truck convoy; sloping right- or leftward).
   • Values and units used as compound modifiers are hyphenated only where the unit is given as a whole word; when using the unit symbol, separate it from the number with a non-breaking space ( ).

Multi-word hyphenated items: It is often possible to avoid multi-word hyphenated modifiers by rewording (a four-CD soundtrack album may be easier to read as a soundtrack album of four CDs). This is particularly important where converted units are involved (the 6-hectare-limit (14.8-acre-limit) rule might be possible as the rule imposing a limit of six hectares (14.8 acres), and the ungainly 4.9-mile (7.9 km) -long tributary as simply 4.9-mile (7.9 km) tributary).

For optional hyphenation of compound points of the compass such as southwest/south-west, see § Compass points.

Do not use a capital letter after a hyphen except for a proper name following the hyphen: Graeco-Roman and Mediterranean-style, but not Gandhi-Like. In titles of published works, when given in title case, follow the capitalization rule for each part independently (The Out-of-Towners), unless reliable sources consistently do otherwise in a particular case (The History of Middle-earth).

Hyphenation rules in other languages may be different. Thus, in French a place name such as Trois-Rivières ('Three Rivers') is hyphenated, when it would not be in English. Follow reliable sources in such cases.

Spacing: A hyphen is never followed or preceded by a space, except when hanging (see above) or when used to display parts of words independently, such as the prefix sub- and the suffix -less.

Image filenames and redirects: Image filenames are not part of the encyclopedic content; they are tools. They are most useful if they can be readily typed, so they usually use hyphens instead of dashes. Similarly, article titles with dashes should also have a corresponding redirect from a copy of the title with hyphens: for example, Michelson-Morley experiment redirects to Michelson–Morley experiment.

Non-breaking: A non-breaking hyphen ({{nbhyph}}) will not be used as a point of line-wrap.

Soft hyphens: Use soft hyphens to mark locations where a word will be broken and hyphenated if necessary at the end of a line of text, usually in very long words or narrow spaces (such as captions, narrow table columns, or text adjacent to a very wide image), for example: {{shy|Penn|syl|va|nia and Mass|a|chu|setts style themselves com|mon|wealths.}}. Use sparingly to avoid making wikitext difficult to read and edit. For more information, see Help:Line-break handling.

Encoding: The hyphen is represented by the ASCII/UNICODE HYPHEN-MINUS character, which is entered by the hyphen or minus key on all standard keyboards. Do not use the UNICODE HYPHEN character.

Hyphenation involves many subtleties that cannot be covered here; the rules and examples presented above illustrate the broad principles.

Two forms of dash are used on Wikipedia: en dash (–) and em dash (—). To enter them, click on them in the CharInsert toolbar, or enter them manually as:

• – or —
• {{endash}} or {{emdash}}

Do not use a double hyphen (--) to stand in for a dash. (See also: Wikipedia:How to make dashes.)

Sources use dashes in varying ways. For consistency and clarity, Wikipedia adopts the following principles.

In article titles, do not use a hyphen (-) as a substitute for an en dash, for example in eye–hand span (since eye does not modify hand). Nonetheless, to aid searching and linking, provide a redirect with hyphens replacing the en dash(es), as in eye-hand span. Similarly, provide category redirects for categories containing dashes. When an en dash is being used as a separator in an article title or section heading, editors may choose whether to capitalize what follows, taking into consideration the existing practice and consistency with related articles.

Dashes are often used to mark divisions within a sentence: in pairs (parenthetical dashes, instead of parentheses or pairs of commas) or singly (perhaps instead of a colon). They may also indicate an abrupt stop or interruption in reporting quoted speech. In all such cases, either unspaced em dashes or spaced en dashes can be used, with consistency maintained throughout a given article:

• An em dash is unspaced on both sides:

• An en dash is spaced on both sides:

Ideally, an en dash should be preceded by a non-breaking space; this prevents the dash from appearing at the beginning of a line. The {{snd}} template may be used for this:

Do not insert any spaces where an en dash should be unspaced (see § Other uses for en dashes).

Dashes can clarify a sentence's structure when commas, parentheses, or both are also being used.

• The book summarizes works of some major philosophers in chronological order: Descartes, Locke, Hume – but not his Treatise (deemed too complex for the target audience) – and Kant.

Use dashes sparingly. More than two in a single sentence makes the structure unclear; it takes time for the reader to see which dashes form a pair, if any.

• The birds – at least the ones Darwin collected – had red and blue feathers.
• "We have run aground at – ", was the final, incomplete message received from the ship.
• Avoid: First – at a marshy site leveled with landfill – came the workshop – then administrative and other buildings.
• Better: First – at a marshy site leveled with landfill – came the workshop; administrative and other buildings were erected later.

For ranges between numbers, dates, or times, use an en dash:

• pp. 7–19;   64–75%;   Henry VIII reigned 1509–1547

Do not change hyphens to dashes in filenames, URLs, or templates such as {{Bibleverse}} (which formats verse ranges into URLs), even if a range is embedded in them.

Do not mix en dashes with between or from.

• 450–500 people
• between 450 and 500 people, not between 450–500 people
• from 450 to 500 people, not from 450–500 people
• from 1961 to 1964, not from 1961–1964
• between the 1961–1962 and 1967–1968 seasons, ticket sales dropped substantially (or between the 1961–62 and 1967–68 seasons)

The en dash in a range is always unspaced, except when either or both elements of the range include at least one space, hyphen, or en dash; in such cases, {{snd}} between them will provide the proper formatting.

• July 23, 1790 – December 1, 1791 (not July 23, 1790–December 1, 1791)
• 14 May – 2 August 2011 (not 14 May–2 August 2011)
• 1–17 September (and note in this case that the second element of the range is 17 not 17 September);   February–October 2009;   1492 – 7 April 1556
• Christmas Day – New Year's Eve;   Christmas 2001 – Easter 2002;   10:30 pm Tuesday – 1:25 am Wednesday;   6:00 p.m. – 9:30 p.m. (but 6:00–9:30 p.m.)
• wavelengths in the range 28 mm – 17 m.
• pages 5-7 – 5-9

If negative values are involved, an unspaced en dash might be confusing:

• −10 to 10, not −10–10 (though −10 – 10 might work in a table consistently formatted with x–y constructions)

Here, the relationship is thought of as parallel, symmetric, equal, oppositional, or at least involving separate or independent elements. The components may be nouns, adjectives, verbs, or any other independent part of speech. Often, if the components are reversed there would be little change of meaning.

• boyfriend–girlfriend problems;   the Paris–Montpellier route;   a New York–Los Angeles flight
• iron–cobalt interactions; the components are parallel and reversible; iron and cobalt retain their identity
• Wrong: an iron–roof shed; iron modifies roof, so use a hyphen: an iron-roof shed
• Wrong: a singer–songwriter; not separate persons, so use a hyphen: a singer-songwriter
• red–green colorblind; red and green are separate independent colors, not mixed
• Wrong: blue–green algae; a blended, intermediate color, so use a hyphen: blue-green algae
• a 51–30 win;   a 12–0 perfect season;   a 22–17 majority vote; but prefer spelling out when using words instead of numerals: a six-to-two majority decision, not with the awkward six–two;  avoid confusingly reversed order: a 17–22 majority vote
• a 50–50 joint venture;   a 60–40 split;   avoid using a slash (stroke) here, which indicates division
• the Uganda–Tanzania War;   the Roman–Syrian War;   the east–west runway;   the Lincoln–Douglas debates;   a carbon–carbon bond
• diode–transistor logic;   the analog–digital distinction;   push–pull output;   on–off switch
• a pro-establishment–anti-intellectual alliance;   Singapore–Sumatra–Java shipping lanes
• the ballerina's rapid walk–dance transitions;   a male–female height ratio of 1.14

Generally, use a hyphen in compounded proper names of single entities.

• Guinea-Bissau; Bissau is its capital, and this name distinguishes the country from neighboring Guinea
• Wilkes-Barre, a single city named after two people, but Minneapolis–Saint Paul, an area encompassing two cities
• John Lennard-Jones, an individual named after two families

Use an en dash between the names of nations or nationalities when referring to an association between them. For people and things identifying with multiple nationalities, use a hyphen when using the combination adjectivally and a space when they are used as nouns, with the first used attributively to modify the second.

• an Italian–Swiss border crossing;   but an Italian-Swiss newspaper for Italian-speaking Swiss
• France–Britain rivalry;   French–British rivalry
• an Indian-American scientist;   was especially popular with Indian Americans
• Wrong: Franco–British rivalry; Franco- is a combining form, not an independent word, so use a hyphen: Franco-British rivalry

A slash or some other alternative may occasionally be better to express a ratio, especially in technical contexts (see § Slashes).

• the protein–fat ratio;   the protein/fat ratio;   the protein-to-fat ratio
• Colons are often used for strictly numeric ratios, to avoid confusion with subtraction and division: a 3:1 ratio;  a three-to-one ratio (see Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers § Ratios).

Use an en dash for the names of two or more entities in an attributive compound.

• the Seifert–van Kampen theorem;   the Alpher–Bethe–Gamow theory
• the Seeliger–Donker-Voet scheme (developed by Seeliger and Donker-Voet)
• Comet Hale–Bopp or just Hale–Bopp (discovered by Hale and Bopp)

Do not use an en dash for hyphenated personal names, even when they are used as adjectives:

• Lennard-Jones potential with a hyphen: named after John Lennard-Jones

Do not use spaces around the en dash in any of the compounds above.

• ex–prime minister Thatcher (consider recasting: former prime minister Thatcher)
• pre–World War II aircraft (consider recasting: aircraft from before World War II)
• post–September 11 anti-war movement
• Trans–New Guinea languages
• post–Hartree–Fock
• Afro–Puerto Rican
• Turks and Caicos–based company
• a Rodgers and Hammerstein–esque musical number

The form of category names follows the corresponding main articles, e.g., Category:Trans–New Guinea languages. However, the principle is not extended when compounding other words in category names, e.g., Category:Tennis-related lists and Category:Table tennis-related lists both use hyphens.

Spaced en dashes are sometimes used between parts of list items. For example:

• James Galway – flute; Anne-Sophie Mutter – violin; Maurizio Pollini – piano.

or

• "The Future" – 7:21
• "Ain't No Cure for Love" – 6:17
• "Bird on the Wire" – 6:14

Editors may choose whether to capitalize what follows, taking into consideration the existing practice and consistency with related articles.

The en dash (–) has several common functions beyond its use in lists and running text. It is used to join components less strongly than a hyphen would (see § Hyphens); conversely, it may also separate components less strongly than a slash would (see § Slashes). Consider the relationship that exists between two components when deciding what punctuation to place between them.

An indented em dash may be used when attributing the source of a passage, such as a block quotation or poem. This dash should not be fully spaced: however, for reasons related to metadata and accessibility, it is best to place a hair space between the dash and the name. Most of Wikipedia's quotation templates provide this formatting automatically.

For example, {{in5}}—{{hair space}}Charlotte Brontë will produce:

     — Charlotte Brontë

Do not use typewriter approximations or other substitutes, such as two hyphens (--), for em or en dashes.

For a negative sign or subtraction operator use U+2212 − MINUS SIGN (−), which can also be generated by clicking on the − following the ± in the Insert toolbar beneath the edit window. Do not use U+2212 − MINUS SIGN inside a <math> tag, as the character gives a syntax error; instead use a normal hyphen U+002D - HYPHEN-MINUS.

Generally, avoid joining two words with a slash, also called a forward slash, stroke or solidus ( / ), because it suggests that the words are related without specifying how. Replace with clearer wording.

An example: The parent/instructor must be present at all times. Must both be present? (Then write the parent and the instructor.) Must at least one be present? (Then write the parent or the instructor.) Are they the same person? (Use a hyphen: the parent-instructor.)

In circumstances involving a distinction or disjunction, the en dash (see above) is usually preferable to the slash: the digital–analog distinction.

An unspaced slash may be used:

• to indicate phonemic pronunciations (rivet is pronounced /ˈrɪvət/);
• in a fraction (7/8, but see other techniques at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers § Fractions and ratios);
• to indicate regular defined yearly periods that do not coincide with calendar years (e.g., the 2009/2010 fiscal year), if that is the convention used in reliable sources (see Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers § Long periods of time for further explanation);
• to express a ratio, in a form in which a slash is conventionally used (e.g., the price-to-earnings ratio, or P/E ratio for short);
• in an expression or abbreviation widely used outside Wikipedia (e.g., n/a or N/A for not applicable).

A spaced slash may be used:

• to separate run-on lines in quoted poetry or song (To be or not to be: that is the question: / Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer / The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune), or rarely in quoted prose, where careful marking of a paragraph break is textually important;
• to separate items that include at least one internal space (the NY 31 east / NY 370 exit), where for some reason use of a slash is unavoidable.

To avoid awkward linebreaks, code spaced slashes (and fraction slashes) with a non-breaking space on the left and a normal space on the right, as in: My mama told me / You better shop around. For short constructions, both spaces should be non-breaking: x / y. On the other hand, if two long words are connected by an unspaced slash, an {{wbr}} added after the slash will allow a linebreak at that point.

Do not use the backslash character ( \ ) in place of a slash.

Prefer the division operator ( ÷ ) to slash or fraction slash when representing elementary arithmetic in general text: 10 ÷ 2 = 5. In more advanced mathematical formulas, a vinculum or slash is preferred: ${\displaystyle \textstyle {\frac {x^{n}}{n!}}}$ or x/n! (see Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers § Common mathematical symbols and Help:Displaying a formula).

Avoid writing and/or unless other constructions would be lengthy or awkward. Instead of Most had trauma and/or smoke inhalation, write simply trauma or smoke inhalation (which would normally be interpreted as an inclusive-or to imply or both); or, for emphasis or precision or both, write trauma or smoke inhalation or both. Where more than two possibilities are present, instead of x, y, and/or z write one or more of x, y, and z or some or all of x, y, and z.

Unicode symbols are preferred over composed ASCII symbols for improved readability and accessibility. Be mindful of presentations that may require ASCII, like sourcecode. Keys for these symbols can be found at the bottom of the Source Editor.

Avoid using the # symbol (known as the number sign, hash sign, pound sign, or octothorpe) when referring to numbers or rankings. Instead write number, No. or Nos.; do not use the symbol №. For example:

An exception is issue numbers of comic books, which unlike for other periodicals are conventionally given in general text in the form #1, unless a volume is also given, in which case write volume two, number seven or Vol. 2, No. 7. Another exception are periodical publications carrying both, issue and number designations (typically one being a year-relative and the other an absolute value); they should be given in the form 2 #143 in citations, or be spelt out as Iss. 2, No. 143 in text. When using the abbreviations, write {{abbr|Vol.|Volume}}, {{abbr|Iss.|Issue}}, {{abbr|No.|Number}}, or {{abbr|Nos.|Numbers}}, at first occurrence.

• Exclamation and question marks have almost no application in encyclopedic writing.
• For the use of three periods in succession, see § Ellipses.
• In some contexts, no terminal punctuation is necessary. In such cases, the sentence often does not start with a capital letter. See § Quotations and § Quotation marks.
• Sentence fragments in captions or lists should in most cases not end with a period. See § Formatting of captions and § Bulleted and numbered lists.

In normal text, never put a space before a comma, semicolon, colon, period/full stop, question mark, or exclamation mark (even in quoted material; see § Typographic conformity).

Some editors place two spaces after a period/full stop (see Sentence spacing); these are condensed to one space when the page is rendered, so it does not affect what readers see.

Where a word or phrase that includes terminal punctuation ends a sentence, do not add a second terminal punctuation mark. If a quoted phrase or title ends in a question mark or exclamation mark, it may confuse readers as to the nature of the article sentence containing it, and so is usually better reworded to be mid-sentence. Where such a word or phrase occurs mid-sentence, new terminal punctuation (usually a period) must be added at the end.

Reference tags (<ref>...</ref>) are used to create footnotes (also called endnotes or simply notes), as citation footnotes and sometimes explanatory notes. All reference tags should immediately follow the text to which the footnote applies, with no intervening space. Apart from the exceptions listed below, references are placed after adjacent punctuation, not before. Adjacent reference tags should have no space between them, nor should there be any between tags and inline dispute and cleanup templates.

When reference tags are used, a footnote list must be added, and this is usually placed in the References section, near the end of the article in the standard appendices and footers.

• Example: Flightless birds have a reduced keel, and they also have smaller wing bones than flying birds of similar size.

Exceptions: Reference tags are placed before dashes, not after. If a footnote applies only to material within parentheses, the tags belong just before the closing parenthesis.

• Example: Paris is not the capital city of England – the capital of which is London – but that of France.
• Example: Kim Jong-un (Korean: 김정은; Hanja: 金正恩) is the Supreme Leader of North Korea.

Sentences should place punctuation after mathematical formulae as if they were normal body text. See Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Mathematics § Punctuation after formulae.

Dates should be linked only when they are germane and topical to the subject, as discussed at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Linking § Chronological items. For ranges of dates and times, see § Other uses for en dashes.

Times of day are normally expressed in figures rather than words. Context determines whether the 12- or the 24-hour format is more appropriate.

• Twelve-hour clock times are written in one of two forms: 11:15 a.m. and 2:30 p.m., or 11:15 am and 2:30 pm (wherein the spaces should be non-breaking). Use noon and midnight rather than 12 pm and 12 am; it may need to be specified whether midnight refers to the start or end of a date.
• Twenty-four-hour clock times are written in the form 08:15 and 22:55, with no suffix. Midnight written as 00:00 begins the day; 24:00 ends it.

Full dates are formatted 10 June 1921 or June 10, 1921; or where the year is omitted, use 10 June or June 10.

• The dates in the text of any one article should all have the same format (day-first or month-first).
  • For date formats in citations, see Wikipedia:Citing sources § Citation style.
  • Dates in quotations and titles are always left as-is.
  • If a numerical format is required (e.g., for conciseness in lists and tables), use the YYYY-MM-DD format: 2005-04-03.
• Articles on topics with strong ties to a particular English-speaking country should generally use the more common date format for that country (month-first for the US, except in military usage; day-first for most others; articles related to Canada may use either consistently). Otherwise, do not change an article from one date format to the other without good reason.

• For month and year, write June 1921, with no comma.
• Abbreviations for months, such as Feb, are used only where space is extremely limited. Such abbreviations should use three letters only, and should not be followed by a period (full point) except at the end of a sentence.

• Avoid ambiguous references to seasons, which are different in the southern and northern hemispheres.
• Names of seasons may be used when there is a logical connection to the event being described (the autumn harvest) or when referring to a phase of a natural yearly cycle (migration typically starts in mid-spring). Otherwise, neutral wording is usually preferable (He was elected in November 1992, not He was elected in the fall of 1992).
• Journals and other publications that are issued seasonally (e.g., "Summer 2005") should be dated as such in citations (for more information, see Wikipedia:Citing sources § Seasonal publication dates and differing calendar systems).

• Do not use the year before the digits (1995, not the year 1995), unless the meaning would otherwise be unclear.
• Decades are written in the format the 1980s, with no apostrophe. Use the two-digit form ('80s) only with an established social or cultural meaning. Avoid forms such as the 1700s that could refer to ten or a hundred years.
• Years are denoted by AD and BC or, equivalently, CE and BCE. Use only one system within an article, and do not change from one system to the other without good reason. The abbreviations are written without periods, and with a non-breaking space, as in 5 BC. Omit AD or CE unless omitting it would cause ambiguity.

More information on all the above topics can be found at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers § Chronological items, including the handling of dates expressed in different calendars, and times corresponding to different time zones.

Terms such as "current", "now", and "recent" should be avoided. What is current today may not be tomorrow; situations change over time. Instead, use date- and time-specific text. To help keep information updated use {{As of}}, which will allow editors to catalog and update dated statements.

• Integers from zero to nine are spelled out in words. Integers greater than nine expressible in one or two words may be expressed either in numerals or in words. Other numbers are given in numerals or in forms such as 21 million. See MOS:NUM § Numbers as figures or words.
• In general, in numbers with five or more digits to the left of the decimal point, use commas to group those digits. Numbers with four digits are at the editor's discretion: 12,345, but either 1,000 or 1000. See MOS:NUM § Grouping of digits.
• In general, use decimals rather than fractions for measurements, but fractions are sometimes used with imperial and U.S. customary units. Keep articles internally consistent.
• Scientific notation (e.g., 5.8×10 kg) is preferred in scientific contexts. Markup: {{val|5.8|e=7|u=kg}}.
• Write out "million" and "billion" on the first use. After that, unspaced "M" can be used for millions and "bn" for billions: 70M and 25bn. See MOS:NUM § Numbers as figures or words for similar words.
• Write 3%, three percent, or three per cent, but not 3 % (with a space) or three %. "Percent" is American usage, and "per cent" is British usage (see § National varieties of English). In ranges of percentages written with an en dash, write only a single percent sign: 3–14%.
• Indicate uncertainties as e.g., (1.534±0.35)×10 m. Markup: {{val|1.534|0.35|e=23|u=m}}. See MOS:NUM § Uncertainty and rounding for other formats.

• Use the full abbreviation on first use (US$ for the US dollar and A$ for the Australian dollar), unless the currency is already clear from context. For example, the government of the United States always spends money in American dollars, and never in Canadian or Australian dollars.
• Use only one symbol with ranges, as in $250–300.
• In articles that are not specific to a country, express amounts of money in United States dollars, euros, or pounds sterling. Do not link the names or symbols of currencies that are commonly known to English-speakers ($, €, £), unless there is a particular reason to do so; do not use potentially ambiguous currency symbols, unless the meaning is clear in the context.
• In country-specific articles, use the currency of the country. On first occurrence, consider including conversion to US dollars, euros, or pounds sterling, at a rate appropriate to the context. For example, Since 2001 the grant has been 10,000,000 Swedish kronor (€1.0M as of August 2009). Wording such as "approx." is not appropriate for simple rounding-off of the converted amount.
• Generally, use the full name of a currency, and link it on its first appearance if English-speakers are likely to be unfamiliar with it (52 Nepalese rupees); subsequent occurrences can use the currency sign (just 88 Rs).
• Most currency symbols are placed before the number, and unspaced ($123 not $ 123).

• The main unit in which a quantity is expressed should generally be an SI unit or non-SI unit officially accepted for use with the SI. However,
  • Scientific articles may also use specialist units appropriate for the branch of science in question.
  • In non-scientific articles with strong ties to the United States, the main unit is generally a U.S. customary unit (22 pounds (10 kg)).
  • In non-scientific articles with strong ties to the United Kingdom, although the main unit is generally a metric unit (10 kilograms (22 lb)), imperial units are still used as the main units in some contexts (7 miles (11 km) by road).
• Where English-speaking countries use different units for the same measurement, provide a conversion in parentheses. Examples: the Mississippi River is 2,320 miles (3,734 km) long; the Murray River is 2,375 kilometres (1,476 mi) long. See {{convert}}.
• In a direct quotation, always retain the source's units. Any conversion should follow in square brackets (or, an obscure use of units can be explained in the article text or a footnote).
• Where space is limited (such as tables, infoboxes, parenthetical notes, and mathematical formulas) unit symbols are preferred. In prose, unit names should be given in full if used only a few times but symbols may be used when a unit (especially one with a long name) is used repeatedly after spelling out the first use (e.g., Up to 15 kilograms of filler is used for a batch of 250 kg), except for unit names that are hardly ever spelled out (°C rather than degrees Celsius).
• Most unit names are not capitalized (see § National varieties of English for spelling differences).
• Use "per" when writing out a unit, rather than a slash: metre per second, not metre/second.
• Units unfamiliar to general readers should be presented as a name–symbol pair on first use, linking the unit name (Energies were originally 2.3 megaelectronvolts (MeV), but were eventually 6 MeV).
• For ranges, see § En dashes: other uses, and MOS:NUM, at §§ Date ranges, Percentages, Unit names and symbols, and Formatting of monetary values.
• Unit symbols are preceded by figures, not by spelled-out numbers. Values and unit symbols are separated by a non-breaking space. For example, 5 min. The percent sign and units of degrees, minutes, and seconds for angles and coordinates are unspaced.

• For a negative sign or subtraction operator, use a minus sign (−, Unicode character U+2212 MINUS SIGN). Input by clicking on it in the insert box beneath the edit window or by typing −.
• For multiplication, use a multiplication sign (U+00D7 × MULTIPLICATION SIGN) or a dot (U+22C5 ⋅ DOT OPERATOR), which are input by clicking on them in the edit toolbox under the edit window or by entering × or ⋅. Care should be taken not to confuse the dot operator (in the "Math and logic" section of the edit toolbox) with an interpunct (in the "Insert" section of the edit toolbox) or a bullet. The letter x should not be used to indicate multiplication, but it is used (unspaced) as the substitute for "by" in terms such as 4x4.
• Exponentiation is indicated by a superscript, a (typed as ''a''<sup>''n''</sup>.
• Do not use programming language notation outside computer program text. In most programming languages, subtraction, multiplication, and exponentiation are represented by the hyphen-minus -, the asterisk *, and either the caret ^ or the double asterisk ** respectively; scientific notation is replaced by E notation.
• Symbols for binary operators and relations are usually spaced on both sides:
  • plus, minus, and plus-or-minus (as binary operators): +, −, ± (as in 5 − 3);
  • multiplication and division: ×, ÷;
  • equals, does not equal, equals approximately: =, ≠, ≈;
  • is less than, is less than or equal to, is greater than, is greater than or equal to: <, ≤, >, ≥.
• Symbols for unary operators are closed-up to their operand:
  • positive, negative, and positive-or-negative signs: +, −, ± (as in −3);
  • other unary operators, such as the exclamation mark as a factorial sign (as in 5!).
• Variables are italicized, but digits and punctuation are not; only x and y are italicized in 2(5x + y).
• {{math}} can be used to style formulas to distinguish them from surrounding text. For single variables, {{mvar}} is handy.

For the possessive of singular nouns, including proper names and words ending in s, add 's (my daughter's achievement, my niece's wedding, Cortez's men, the boss's office, Illinois's largest employer, the US's partners, Descartes's philosophy, Verreaux's eagle). Exception: abstract nouns ending with an /s/ sound when followed by sake (for goodness' sake, for his conscience' sake). If a name ending in s or z would be difficult to pronounce with 's added (Jesus's teachings), consider rewording (the teachings of Jesus).

• For a normal plural noun ending with a pronounced s, form the possessive by adding just an apostrophe (my sons' wives, my nieces' weddings).
• For a plural noun not ending with a pronounced s, add 's (women's careers, people's habits, mice's whiskers; The two Dumas's careers were controversial, but where rewording is an option, this may be better: The career of each Dumas was controversial).

Official names (of companies, organizations, or places) should not be altered. (St Thomas' Hospital should therefore not be rendered as St Thomas's Hospital or St. Thomas Hospital, even for consistency.)

This section is currently being merged. After a discussion, consensus to merge this section with content from Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ships)#Pronouns was found. You can help implement the merge by following the instructions at Help:Merging and the resolution on the discussion. Process started in October 2024.

To maintain an objective and impersonal encyclopedic voice, an article should never refer to its editors or readers using I, my, we, us, our, or similar words: We note that some believe that bats are bugs. But some of these words are acceptable in certain figurative uses. For example:

• In historical articles to mean the modern world as a whole: Only portions of De re publica have come down to us.
• The author's we found in scientific writing (We construct S as follows), though passive voice may be preferable (S is constructed as follows).

Avoid addressing the reader using you or your, which sets an inappropriate tone (see also § Instructional and presumptuous language).

• Use a noun or a third-person pronoun: instead of When you move past "Go", you collect $200, use A player passing "Go" collects $200, or When a player passes "Go", they collect $200.
• If a person cannot be specified, or when implying "anyone" as a subject, the impersonal pronoun one may be used: a sense that one is being watched. Other constructions may be preferable if the pronoun one seems stilted: a person's sense of being watched.
• The passive voice may sometimes be used instead: Impurities are removed before bottling.
• Do not bait links, e.g., "Click here for more information"; let the browser's normal highlighting invite a click. ("Click here" also makes no sense to someone reading on paper.)
• Likewise, "See: (reference)" or "Consider ..." are milder second-person baits, common in academic writing (pedagogy). This interactive personality is inconsistent with an encyclopedia's passive presentation of objective matter.
  • "See" and the like can be used to internally cross-reference other Wikipedia material. Do not italicize words like "see". Such a cross reference should be parenthetical, so the article text stands alone if the parenthetical is removed. {{Cross reference}} can be used for this: {{Cross reference|(see [[Chicken]])}}, {{Cross reference|(See [[Dacian language]] for details.)}} It is usually better to rewrite the material to integrate these links contextually rather than use explicit Wikipedia self-references.
• Do not address the reader with the Socratic method by asking and answering questions. Did Bacon write Shakespeare? Then who wrote Bacon?

Use the appropriate plural; allow for cases (such as excursus or hanif) in which a word is now listed in major English dictionaries, and normally takes an s or es plural, not its original plural: two excursuses, not two excursūs as in Latin; three hanifs, not three hunafa as in Arabic.

Some collective nouns – such as team (and proper names of them), army, company, crowd, fleet, government, majority, mess, number, pack, and party – may refer either to a single entity or to the members that compose it. In British English, such words are sometimes treated as singular, but more often treated as plural, according to context (but singular is not actually incorrect). In North American English, these words are almost invariably treated as singular; the major exception is that when a sports team is referred to by its short name, plural verbs are commonly used, e.g. the Heat are playing the Lakers tonight.

Names of towns and countries usually take singular verbs (even when grammatically plural: the United States is in North America, the Netherlands is also known as Holland), but exceptionally in British English, typically when used to refer to a sports team named after a town or country or when discussing actions of a government, plural is used. For example, in England are playing Germany tomorrow, England refers to a football team; but in England is in the Northern hemisphere, it refers to the country. See also § National varieties of English including § Opportunities for commonality.

By default, write articles in the present tense, including those covering works of fiction (see Wikipedia:Writing better articles § Tense in fiction) and products or works that have been discontinued. Generally, use past tense only for past events, and for subjects that are dead or no longer meaningfully exist. Use past tense for articles about periodicals no longer produced, with common-sense exceptions.

• The PDP-10 is a mainframe computer family manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation from 1966 into the 1980s.
• Earth: Final Conflict is a Canadian science fiction television series that ran for five seasons between October 6, 1997, and May 20, 2002.
• The Gordon Riots of 1780 were ...
• The Beatles were an English rock band that formed in Liverpool in 1960.
• Barack Obama is a former president of the United States (not Barack Obama was a president of the United States).
• Jumbo Comics was an adventure anthology comic book published by Fiction House from 1938 to 1953.
• A Prairie Home Companion is a radio show that aired live from 1974 to 2016 (not A Prairie Home Companion was a radio show).
• Flappy Bird is a mobile game developed by Vietnamese video game artist and programmer Dong Nguyen (not Flappy Bird was a mobile game).

Tense can be used to distinguish between current and former status of a subject: Dún Aonghasa is the ruin of a prehistoric Irish cliff fort. Its original shape was presumably oval or D-shaped, but parts of the cliff and fort have since collapsed into the sea. (Emphasis added to distinguish the different tense usages; Dún Aonghasa is a structure that was later damaged by an event.)

Always use present tense for verbs that describe genres, types, and classes, even if the subject of the description (e.g. program, library, device) no longer exists, is discontinued, is unsupported or is unmaintained.

Avoid contractions, which have little place in formal writing. For example, write do not instead of don't. Use of o'clock is an exception. Contracted titles such as Dr. and St generally should not be used but may apply in some contexts (e.g., quoted material, place names, titles of works).

Use gender-neutral language – avoiding the generic he, for example – if this can be done with clarity and precision. This does not apply to direct quotations or the titles of works (The Ascent of Man), which should not be altered, or to wording about one-gender contexts, such as an all-female school (When any student breaks that rule, she loses privileges).

References to space programs, past, present and future, should use gender-neutral phrasing: human spaceflight, robotic probe, uncrewed mission, crewed spacecraft, piloted, unpiloted, astronaut, cosmonaut, not manned or unmanned. Direct quotations and proper nouns that use gendered words should not be changed, like Manned Maneuvering Unit.

Ships may be referred to using either neuter forms ("it", "its") or feminine forms ("she", "her", "hers"). Either usage is acceptable, but each article should be internally consistent and employ one or the other exclusively. As with all optional styles, articles should not be changed from one style to another unless there is a substantial reason to do so. See Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Military history § Pronouns.

Avoid words and phrases that give the impression of straining for formality, that are unnecessarily regional, or that are not widely accepted. See List of commonly misused English words; see also § Identity.

Avoid phrases such as remember that and note that, which address readers directly in an unencyclopedic tone and lean toward instructional. They are a subtle form of Wikipedia self-reference, "breaking the fourth wall". Similarly, phrases such as of course, naturally, obviously, clearly, and actually make presumptions about readers' knowledge, may express a viewpoint, and may call into question the reason for including the information in the first place. Do not tell readers that something is interesting, ironic, surprising, unexpected, amusing, coincidental, etc. Simply present sourced facts neutrally and let readers draw their own conclusions. Such constructions can usually just be deleted, leaving behind proper sentences with a more academic and less pushy tone: Note that this was naturally subject to controversy in more conservative newspapers. becomes This was subject to controversy in more conservative newspapers. Similar variants which indirectly instruct readers, such as It should be noted that or It is important to note that, may be rewritten by leaving out those words: It is important to note that the colloquial dialect of Portuñol is similar to but different from Mirandese becomes just The colloquial dialect of Portuñol is similar to but different from Mirandese.

Avoid rhetorical questions, especially in headings. Use a heading of Active listening and text such as The term active listening, coined in ..., not What is active listening?

For issues in the use of cross-references – e.g., (see also Bulverism) – see § Second-person pronouns.

A subset term identifies a set of members of a larger class. Common subset terms are including, among, and etc. Avoid redundant subset terms (e.g., mis-constructions like Among the most well-known members of the fraternity are included two members of the Onassis family or The elements in stars include hydrogen, helium, etc.). The word including does not introduce a complete list; instead, use consisting of, or composed of.

When there is a discrepancy between the term most commonly used by reliable sources for a person or group and the term that person or group uses for themselves, use the term that is most commonly used by recent reliable sources. If it is unclear which is most used, use the term that the person or group uses.

Disputes over how to refer to a person or group are addressed by Wikipedia content policies, such as those on verifiability, and neutral point of view (and article titles when the term appears in the title of an article).

Use specific terminology. For example, it is often more appropriate for people or things from Ethiopia (a country in Africa) to be described as Ethiopian, not carelessly (with the risk of stereotyping) as African.

Specific guidelines apply to any person whose gender might be questioned, and any living transgender or non-binary person. In summary:

• Use gendered words only if they reflect the person's latest self-identification as reported in recent sources.
• If the person is living and was not notable yet when a former name was in use, that name should not be included in any Wikipedia page, even in quotations, as a privacy matter. Exception: Do not expunge or replace names in source citations (whether as authors or mentioned in work titles).
• Former names under which a living person was notable should be introduced with "born" or "formerly" in the lead sentence of their main biographical article. Name and gender matters should be explained at first appearance in that article, without overemphasis. In articles on works or other activities of such a person, use their current name by default, and give another name associated with that context in a parenthetical or footnote, only if they were notable under that name. In other articles, do not go into detail about such a person's name or gender except when directly relevant to the context.
• Avoid confusing constructions by rewriting. Paraphrase, elide, or use square brackets to replace portions of quotations as needed to avoid confusion, former names, and mismatching gendered words.

For examples and finer points, see Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Biography § Gender identity.

Non-English terms should be used sparingly. In general, use italics for phrases and words that are not current in English. This is best done with the {{lang}} template using the appropriate ISO language code, e.g., {{lang|es|casa}}. There are alternatives to the {{lang}} template which also provide additional information about a non-English word or phrase, such as a link to the language name; see Category:Wikipedia multilingual support templates. As Wikipedia does not apply italics to names of people, places, or organizations, the alternative template {{langr}} can be used to apply the language markup without italicizing. Templates like {{lang}} automatically italicize text written using the Latin alphabet, so specifying italics is unnecessary.

Text written in non-Latin scripts such as Greek, Cyrillic, and Chinese should not be italicized or put in bold, as the difference in script is already sufficient to visually distinguish the text. Generally, any non-Latin text should include an appropriate romanization.

Loanwords and borrowed phrases that have common usage in English – Gestapo, samurai, vice versa – do not require italics. A rule of thumb is to not italicize words that appear in major general-purpose English dictionaries.

Names and terms originally written using a non-Latin script—such as the Greek alphabet, the Cyrillic alphabet, or Chinese characters—must be romanized for English-language use. If a particular romanization of the subject's name is most common in English (Tchaikovsky, Chiang Kai-shek), that form should be used. Otherwise, the romanization of names should adhere to a particular widely used system for the language in question (Aleksandr Tymoczko, Wang Yanhong).

The use of diacritics in non-English words is neither encouraged nor discouraged. Use generally depends on whether they appear in reliable English-language sources, though with some additional constraints imposed by site guidelines. Provide redirects from alternative forms that include or exclude diacritics.

Proper names in languages written using the Latin alphabet can include letters with diacritics, ligatures, and other characters that are not commonly used in contemporary English. Wikipedia normally retains these special characters, except where there is a well-established English spelling that replaces them with English standard letters. Examples:

• The name of the article on Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős is spelt with the double acute accent, and the alternative spellings Paul Erdos and Paul Erdös redirect to that article.
• Similarly, the name of the article on the Nordic god Ægir is so spelt, with redirects from the ligature-free form Aegir and the Swedish spelling Ägir.
• However, the region of Spain named Aragón in Spanish and Aragó in Catalan is given as Aragon, without the accent, as this is the established English name. Non-English forms with diacritics appear in the article's lead section.

Use of diacritics is determined on a topic-by-topic basis; a small group of editors cannot prohibit or require the use of diacritics within a given class of articles.

Spell a name consistently in the title and the text of an article. (Relevant policy: Wikipedia:Article titles; see also Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English).) For a non-English name, phrase, or word, adopt the spelling most commonly used in English-language reliable sources, including but not limited to those already cited in the article. For punctuation of compounded forms, see relevant guidelines in § Punctuation.

Proper names in non-English languages should generally not be italicized, unless another reason applies; such as with titles of major published works, e.g., Les Liaisons dangereuses; or when being compared to other names for the same subject in a words-as-words manner, e.g., Nuremberg (German: Nürnberg). When non-English text should not be italicized, it can still be properly tagged by using the {{lang}} template with the |italic=unset parameter: {{lang|de|italic=unset|Nürnberg}}.

Sometimes usage will be influenced by other guidelines, such as § National varieties of English, which may lead to different choices in different articles.

• For non-English vernacular names of species, see § Animals, plants, and other organisms.
• For handling of quotations in languages other than English, see § Non-English quotations.
• For non-English characters that resemble single quotation marks and apostrophes, see § Apostrophes.
• For actual non-English quotation characters, see § Quotation characters.
• For the capitalization in the titles of non-English language works, see Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Titles § Capitalization in foreign-language titles.
• For linear and interlinear glosses and their particular uses of small-caps (and italics and single quotes), see Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Capital letters § All caps and small caps.

Some topics are necessarily technical: however, editors should seek to write articles accessible to the greatest possible number of readers. Minimize the use of jargon, and adequately explain its meaning when it is used. Overly technical material can be tagged with {{Technical}} or {{Technical-statement}}, so that it can be addressed by other editors. For topics that require a more technical approach, the creation of a separate introductory article (like Introduction to general relativity) may be a solution.

Excessive wikilinking (linking within Wikipedia) can result from trying too hard to avoid putting explanations in parenthetical statements, like the one that appeared earlier in this sentence. Do not introduce specialized words simply to teach them to the reader when more widely understood alternatives will do.

When the concepts underlying the jargon used in an article are too complex to explain concisely in a parenthetical, write one level down. For example, consider adding a brief background section with {{main}} tags pointing to articles with a fuller treatment of the prerequisite material. This approach is practical only when the prerequisite concepts are central to the exposition of the article's main topic and when such prerequisites are not too numerous. Short articles, such as stubs, generally do not have such sections.

For italicization and other markup of introduced terms, see: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Text formatting § Words as words.

Geographical or place names are the nouns used to refer to specific places and geographic features. These names often give rise to conflict, because the same places are called different things by different peoples speaking different languages. Many place names have a historical context that should be preserved, but common sense should prevail. There can be few places that have not been parts of more than one culture or have had only one name. As proper nouns, all such place names (but not terms for types of places) have major words capitalized.

A place should generally be referred to consistently by the same name as in the title of its article (see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names)). An exception may be made when there is a widely accepted historical English name appropriate to the given context. In cases where such a historical name is used, it should be followed by the modern name in round brackets (parentheses) on the first occurrence of the name in applicable sections of the article. This resembles linking; it should not be done to the detriment of style. On the other hand, it is probably better to provide such a variant too often than too rarely. If more than one historical name is applicable for a given context, the other names should be added after the modern English name, that is: "historical name (modern name, other historical names)".

This is an English-language encyclopedia, so established English names are preferred if they exist, and spellings in non-English alphabets should always be transcribed into the Roman alphabet. In general, other articles should refer to places by the names which are used in the articles on those places, according to the rules described at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names). If a different name is appropriate in a given historical or other context, then that may be used instead, although it is normal to follow the first occurrence of such a name with the standard modern name in parentheses.

At the start of an article, provide notable equivalent names from other languages, including transcriptions where necessary:

Cologne (German: Köln, IPA: [kœln]) is the ...

Mount Fuji (富士山 Fuji-san, IPA: [ɸuʥisaɴ]) is the ...

Names in languages with no particular present-day or historical ties to the place in question (English excepted, of course) should not be listed as alternatives.

Avoid anachronism. An article about Junípero Serra should say he lived in Alta Mexico, not in California, because the latter entity did not yet exist in Serra's time. The Romans invaded Gaul, not France, and Thabo Mbeki was the president of the Republic of South Africa, not of the Cape Colony. To be clear, you may sometimes need to mention the current name of the area (for example "in what is now France"), especially if no English name exists for that area in the relevant historical period.

• Each image should be inside the level 2 section to which it relates, within the section defined by the most recent ==Heading== delimited by two equal signs, or at the top of the lead section. Do not place images immediately above section headings.
• Avoid sandwiching text horizontally between two images that face each other, and between an image and an infobox or similar.
• It is often preferable to place images of people so they "look" toward the text. Do not achieve this by reversing the image.
• Any galleries should comply with Wikipedia:Image use policy § Image galleries. Consider linking to additional images on Commons instead.
• Avoid referring to images as being to the left, the right, above or below, because image placement varies with platform, and is meaningless to people using screen readers; instead, use captions to identify images.
• An image's |alt= text takes the image's place for those who are unable to see the image. See Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Accessibility/Alternative text for images.

Style guidelines for still images are generally also applicable to equivalent questions regarding the use of audio and video media.

Textual information should always be transmitted as text, rather than in an image. True text can be easily searched, selected, copied, and manipulated by readers; its presentation can also be adjusted using CSS. These tasks are generally difficult or impossible with text presented in an image: images are slower to download, and generally cannot be searched or processed by screen readers used by the visually impaired. Any important textual information in an image should be provided somewhere as text, generally either in the image's caption or alt text.

For entering textual information as audio, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia.

Photographs and other graphics should have captions, unless they are unambiguous depictions of the subject of the article or when they are "self-captioning" images (such as reproductions of album or book covers). In a biography article no caption is necessary for a portrait of the subject pictured alone, but one might be used to give the year, the subject's age, or other circumstances of the portrait along with the name of the subject.

• Captions normally start with a capital letter.
• Most captions are not complete sentences but merely sentence fragments which should not end with a period. However, if any complete sentence occurs in a caption, then every sentence and every sentence fragment in that caption should end with a period.
• The text of captions should not be specially formatted, except in ways that would apply if it occurred in the main text (e.g., italics for the Latin name of a species).
• Captions should be succinct; more information can be included on its description page, or in the main text.
• Captions for technical charts and diagrams may need to be substantially longer than usual; they should fully describe all elements of the image and indicate its significance.

• Do not use lists if a passage is read easily as plain paragraphs.
• Use proper wiki markup- or template-based list code (see Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lists and Help:List).
• Do not leave blank lines between items in a bulleted or numbered list unless there is a reason to do so, since this causes the Wiki software to interpret each item as beginning a new list.
  • Indents (such as this) are permitted if the elements are "child" items.
• Use numbers rather than bullets only if:
  • a need to refer to the elements by number may arise;
  • the sequence of the items is critical; or
  • the numbering has some independent meaning, for example in a listing of musical tracks.
• Use the same grammatical form for all elements in a list, and do not mix sentences and sentence fragments as elements, for example when the elements are:
  • complete sentences – each one is formatted with sentence case (its first letter is capitalized) and a final period (full point);
  • sentence fragments – the list is typically introduced by an introductory fragment ending with a colon;
  • titles of works – they retain the original capitalization of the titles;
  • other elements – they are formatted consistently in either sentence case or lower case.

Make links only where they are relevant and helpful in the context: Excessive use of hyperlinks can be distracting and may slow the reader down. Redundant links (like the one in the tallest people on Earth) clutter the page and make future maintenance harder. High-value links that are worth pursuing should stand out clearly.

Linking to sections: A hash sign (#) followed by the appropriate heading will lead to a relevant part of a page. For example, [[Apostrophe#Use in non-English names]] links to a particular section of the article Apostrophe.

Initial capitalization: Wikipedia's MediaWiki software does not require that wikilinks begin with an upper-case character. Capitalize the first letter only where this is naturally called for, or when specifically referring to the linked article by its name (see also related rule for italics in cross-references): Snakes are often venomous, but lizards only rarely (see Poison).

Check links: Ensure the destination is the intended one; many dictionary words lead to disambiguation pages and not to complete or well-chosen articles.

External links should not normally be used in the body of an article. Instead, articles can include an External links section at the end, pointing to further information outside Wikipedia as distinct from citing sources. The standard format is a primary heading, ==External links==, followed by a bulleted list of links. Identify the link and briefly indicate its relevance to the article. For example:

These will appear as:

Where appropriate, use external link templates such as {{Official website}} and {{URL}}.

Add external links with discretion; Wikipedia is not a link repository.

Other things being equal, keep markup simple. This makes wikitext easier to understand and edit, and the results seen by the reader more predictable. Use HTML and CSS markup sparingly. See: KISS principle.

In general, wikitext formatting is considered easier to use than HTML and wikitext is preferred if there are equivalents; see Help:HTML in wikitext. Obsolete elements and attributes should be updated or removed. There are many templates that allow HTML markup to be used without putting it in articles directly, such as {{em}} (see MOS:EMPHASIS) and {{strong}} (see MOS:BOLD).

An HTML character entity is sometimes better than the equivalent Unicode character, which may be difficult to identify in edit mode; for example, Α is explicit whereas Α (the upper-case form of Greek α) may be misidentified as the Latin A.

Modifications in font size, blank space, and color (see § Color coding) are an issue for the Wikipedia site-wide style sheet and should be reserved for special cases only.

Typically, the use of custom font styles:

• reduces consistency, as the text no longer looks uniform;
• reduces usability, as it may be impossible for people with custom style sheets (e.g. for accessibility reasons) to override it, and may clash with a different skin or inconvenience people with color blindness (see below); and
• causes disputes, as other editors may disagree aesthetically with the choice of style.

Specify font sizes relatively (for example with font-size: 85%) rather than absolutely (like font-size: 8pt). The resulting font size of any text should not drop below 85% of the page's default font size.

Do not use color alone to mark differences in text: they may be invisible to people with color blindness and useless in black-and-white printouts or displays.

Choose colors such as maroon and teal that are distinguishable by readers with the most common form of colorblindness, and additionally mark the differences with change of font or some other means (maroon and alternative font face, teal). Avoid low contrast between text and background colors. See also color coding.

Even for readers with unimpaired color vision, excessive background shading of table entries impedes readability and recognition of Wikilinks. Background color should be used only as a supplementary visual cue and should be subtle (consider using lighter, less-dominant pastel hues) rather than glaring.

Do not use quotation templates to indent non-quotations. Various templates are available for indentation, including {{block indent}} to indent an entire block and {{in5}} to indent inline.

Do not use : (description list markup) to indent text in articles, even though it is common on talk pages. It causes accessibility problems and outputs invalid HTML. See Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Accessibility § Indentation for alternatives.

It is sometimes desirable to force a text segment to appear entirely on a single line‍—‌that is, to prevent a line break (line wrap) from occurring anywhere within it.

• A non-breaking space (or hard space) will never be used as a line-break point. Markup: for 19 kg, code 19 kg or 19{{nbsp}}kg.
• Or use {{nowrap}}, {{nobreak}}, or {{nobr}} (all equivalent). Markup: for 5° 24′ N, code {{nobr|5° 24′ N}}.

It is desirable to prevent line breaks where breaking across lines might be confusing or awkward. For example:

Whether a non-breaking space is appropriate depends on context: whereas it is appropriate to use 12{{nbsp}}MB in prose, it may be counterproductive in a table (where an unattractive break may be acceptable to conserve precious horizontal space) and unnecessary in a short parameter value in an infobox (where a break would never occur anyway).

A line break may occur at a thin space ( , or {{thinsp}}), which is sometimes used to correct too-close placement of adjacent characters. To prevent this, consider using {{nobr}}.

Insert non-breaking and thin spaces as named character reference (  or  ), or as templates that generate these ({{nbsp}}, {{thinsp}}), and never by entering them directly into the edit window from the keyboard – they are visually indistinguishable from regular spaces, and later editors will be unable to see what they are. Inside wikilinks, a construction such as [[World War II]] works but [[World War{{nbsp}}II]] doesn't.

Elements that can selectively display or hide content can interfere with the ability of readers to access said content. These mechanisms include scrolling lists, and templates like {{collapse}} that can be toggled between collapsed and uncollapsed states using a [hide / show] button. These mechanisms should not be used to conceal "spoiler" information. Templates should generally not be used to store article text at all, as it interferes with editors' ability to find and edit it. Moreover, content in an article should never be collapsed by default. This applies equally to content in footnotes, tables, and embedded lists, image galleries, and image captions.

If such mechanisms are used, care must be taken to ensure the content remains accessible for all users, including those with limited CSS or JavaScript support. When collapsing is desired, it must be done using the collapsible parameter of relevant templates, or certain manually-added CSS classes (see Help:Collapsing). Other methods of hiding content should not be used, as they may render content inaccessible to many users, such as those browsing Wikipedia with JavaScript disabled or using proxy services such as Google Web Light.

Collapsed or auto-collapsing cells or sections may be used with tables if they simply repeat information covered in the main text (or are purely supplementary, e.g., several past years of statistics in collapsed tables for comparison with a table of uncollapsed current stats). Auto-collapsing is often a feature of navboxes. A few infoboxes also use pre-collapsed sections for infrequently accessed details. If information in a list, infobox, or other non-navigational content seems extraneous or trivial enough to inspire pre-collapsing it, consider raising a discussion on the article (or template) talk page about whether it should be included at all. If the information is important and the concern is article density or length, consider dividing the article into more sections, integrating unnecessarily list-formatted information into the article prose, or splitting the article.

Editors use "invisible" comments – not shown in the rendered page seen by readers of the article, but visible in the source editing mode when an editor opens the article for editing – to communicate with one another.

Invisible comments are useful for alerting other editors to issues such as common mistakes that regularly occur in the article, a section title's being the target of an incoming link, or pointing to a discussion that established a consensus relating to the article. They should not be used to instruct other editors not to perform certain edits, which could be perceived as expressing a form of ownership over an article, although where existing local consensus is against making an edit they may usefully draw the editor's attention to that. Avoid adding too many invisible comments because they can clutter the wiki source for other editors. Check that your invisible comment does not change the formatting, for example by introducing unwanted white space in the rendered page.

To leave an invisible comment, enclose the text you intend to be read only by editors between <!-- and -->. For example:

• <!-- If you change this section title, also change the links to it on the pages ... --> (there are bots which can do this, see MOS:RENAMESECTION)
• <!-- When adding table entries, remember to update the total given in the text. -->

This notation can be inserted with a single click in wiki markup, just under the edit pane in edit mode.

Pronunciation in Wikipedia is indicated in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). In most situations, for ease of understanding by the majority of readers and across variants of the language, quite broad IPA transcriptions are best for English pronunciations. See Help:IPA/English and Help:IPA (general) for keys, and {{IPA}} for templates that link to these keys. For English pronunciations, pronunciation respellings may be used in addition to the IPA.

• Editing policy – explains Wikipedia's general philosophy of editing
• Wikipedia is not a manual, guidebook, textbook, or scientific journal – we write for a general, not technical, readership as much as we can
• Manual of Style tutorial – a quick introduction to the style guide for articles
• Manual of Style quiz – test your Manual of Style knowledge
• Styletips – a list of advice for editors on writing style and formatting
• Manual of Style Contents – guidelines for film, novels, biographies, military history, etc.
• Identifying and using style guides – an essay providing a summary of off-site style guides' influences on MoS and their uses as sources in Wikipedia articles
• Wikipedia:If MOS doesn't need a rule on something, then it needs to not have a rule on that thing – resisting MOSbloat

• Annotated article – is a well-constructed sample article, with annotations
• Article development – lists the ways in which you can help an article grow
  • Basic copyediting – gives helpful advice on copy-editing
  • Better articles – guidance on how to make articles better
  • Perfect article – point-by-point guidance on what makes a great article
• Avoiding common mistakes – gives a list of common mistakes and how to avoid them
• Be bold – suggests a bold attitude toward page updates
• Citing sources – explains process and standards for citing references
• Editing – is a short primer on editing pages
• Style guide – contains links to the style guides of some magazines and newspapers
• Wiki markup – explains the codes and resources available for editing a page
• Wikipedia:in versus of – proper use of in and of (or some alternatives, as from and on)

• User:GregU's dashes script – a script that will fix dashes in articles in accordance with MOS:DASH
• User:Ohconfucius MOSDATE script – a script that will unify dates in articles in accordance with MOS:DATEFORMAT

• List of policies – a comprehensive, descriptive directory of policies
• List of guidelines – a comprehensive descriptive directory of guidelines
  • Community standards and advice – a quick directory of community norms and related guidance essays
• Advice pages – about advice pages written by WikiProjects

(Links to policy and guidelines on specific questions)

• Proper names:
  • Generally (dedicated MOS page): Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Proper names
  • Place names: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Proper names § Place names
  • Diacritical marks in names: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Proper names § Diacritics
  • Peoples and languages that share the same name: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Proper names § Peoples and their languages
  • Names of ships in article titles and in the body of articles: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ships)

• Naming and identifying individuals and peoples:
  • Generally: § Identity
  • Specifically (for individuals): Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Biographies § Names
  • Opening paragraph of biographies: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Biographies § Opening paragraph
• Names of organizations:
  • Generally (has application beyond the topic guideline in which it is currently located): Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Cue sports § Respect for official organization names
  • Names that are also trademarks (dedicated MOS page): Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Trademarks
• Names of animal and plant species, etc. (in article titles): Wikipedia:Naming conventions (fauna), Wikipedia:Naming conventions (flora)

Wikipedians are encouraged to familiarize themselves with modern editions of other guides to style and usage, which may cover details not included here. Those that have most influenced the Wikipedia Manual of Style are:

• The Chicago Manual of Style (University of Chicago Press). The CMS Crib Sheet is free online, and summarizes the main provisions.
• Oxford Guide to Style (Oxford University Press). A compressed edition is available as New Hart's Rules. Available with its companion, the Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors, in one volume as New Oxford Style Manual
• Scientific Style and Format (Council of Science Editors)
• Garner's Modern English Usage (Oxford University Press)
• Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage (Oxford University Press; primarily British English)
• The MLA Style Manual (Modern Language Association)
• The Elements of Style by Strunk & White