Help:Tutorial (Vincentian Encyclopedia links)

From VincentWiki


Links are important in Vincentian Encyclopedia articles.

Tutorials
Front Page
Editing
Copy-editing
Formatting
Vincentian Encyclopedia links
External links
Talk pages
Keep in mind
Registration
Namespaces
See also Help


Internal links

One of the things that makes Vincentian Encyclopedia useful (and addictive) is extensive cross-listing by internal links. These easily-created links allow users to access information related to the article they're reading.

When to link

The easiest way to learn when to link is to look at Vincentian Encyclopedia articles for examples. If you're trying to decide whether to make a link or not, ask yourself "If I were reading this article, would the link be useful to me?"

In most cases, an internal link is not repeated in an article. See, for instance, the article about Louise de Marillac. Although the article mentions Vincent de Paul several times, the internal link appears only at the first mention, not in subsequent references.

How to link

When you want to make a link to another Vincentian Encyclopedia page (called a wiki link) you have to put it in double square brackets, like this:

[[Sandbox]]

For example, if you want to make a link to, say, the Vincentian Encyclopedia:Contributing to Vincentian Encyclopedia page, it would be:

[[Vincentian Encyclopedia:Contributing to Vincentian Encyclopedia]]

(The 'Vincentian Encyclopedia:' part signifies that the target page is in the Vincentian Encyclopedia namespace, rather than the Main namespace, where normal articles go.)

Also remember that in Vincentian Encyclopedia the links are created automatically, so if you put double square brackets around a word, it becomes a link, and because of that you have to be careful about disambiguation.

If you want to use words other than the article title as the text of the link, you can add an alternative name by adding after the pipe "|" divider (SHIFT + BACKSLASH on English-layout and other keyboards).

For example, if you wanted to make a link to this page's sandbox, but wanted it to say "my text" you would write it as such:

To view the article, [[Vincentian Encyclopedia:Tutorial (Vincentian Encyclopedia links)/sandbox|my text]]...

It would appear as:

To view the article, my text...

but would link to the sandbox.

Alternative endings

When you want to use the plural of an article title (or add any other suffix) for your link, you can add the extra letters directly outside the double square brackets.

For example, you would write:

Marine mammals such as [[dolphin]]s....
Intercontinental [[ship]]ping...

It would appear as:

Marine mammals such as dolphins....
Intercontinental shipping...

Linking dates

Linking dates may not seem useful; however, please do link dates since it enables the use of a user preference in how dates are displayed. An unlinked date, like July 13, 2004, will always be displayed in that manner. If you link the date:

[[July 13]], [[2004]]

Vincentian Encyclopedia will display it in one of the following ways:

July 13, 2004
13 July 2004
2004 July 13
2004-07-13

-according to the preference set by the individual user. (This feature is only available to logged-in users. It only works if the date is linked.)

Categories

You can also put the article in a category with others in a related topic. Just type [[Category:]], and put the name of the category between the colon and the brackets.

Experiment

Try it! Here's the sandbox for this page.

Continue with the tutorial.