Help:Quick guide to editing
| Writing articles |
|---|
|
| Help Desk |
|
General judge articles |
| Style guidelines Cheatsheet • Tool box Discussions • Community |
Contents |
This page is about the most common editing functions you'll use over and over again as you edit and write articles on Judgepedia (JP).
Creating links
Internal links (wiki-links)
You can link to other pages within Judgepedia (for example, the Main Page) by placing double brackets around the name of the article on Judgepedia you want to link to from the page you're currently editing, in this fashion: ([[ ]]). Be sure to put the exact title of the other Judgepedia article you're linking to, including the exact capitalization of that article; otherwise, your link won't work.
Putting a link on one Judgepedia page to another JP page is known as "wiki-linking". If I put a link here to the Sonia Sotomayor article--like I just did--you would say that I had "wiki-linked to the Sotomayor article".
Tip: If you want to use text to describe the name of the other JP article you're directing people to other than its title, the way to do that is to add a pipe symbol ( | ) after the title of the JP article you're linking to and then type however you want to describe that article.
(Note: The pipe, or "|" symbol, is usually located on your computer keyboard on the key under your backspace key.)
- For example:[[History of the Supreme Court|John Marshall]]
- Which will appear as this on the finished article: John Marshall
Links to subsections
You can link directly to a subsection of an article rather than just to the article.
For example, consider the article on the Alaska Supreme Court. It has a section called "The court's justices". While writing another article on JP, you might want to send your readers directly to that particular section of the article on the Alaska Supreme Court.
Here's how to do that:
- [[Alaska Supreme Court#The court's justices|Current justices of the Alaska Supreme Court]].
- Here's how that looks: Current justices of the Alaska Supreme Court.
- Note that I could have put any words after the pipe ( | ) in this example. The key thing is to include the hash tag ( # ) after the name of the article, and before the name of the specific subsection you wish to link to.
External links
To link to a website outside of Judgepedia, you can just type out its URL; for example: http://www.google.com.
Stylistically, it is preferred if you attach that URL to a clickable word that describes the website you're linking to. To do that, surround the URL with single brackets ([ ]), insert a space, and then type the word(s) you want to show as the link: Google Search
When you insert such an external link, a little arrow pops up after your external link. That little arrow is how you (and readers) can tell the difference between an internal link and an external link.
Inter-wiki linking
You can also place links on a Judgepedia article to articles on Wikipedia and to articles on Judgepedia's sister projects, Ballotpedia and Sunshine Review. This is known as "inter-wiki linking".
The way to insert a link on a JP article to an article on Wikipedia, Ballotpedia or Sunshine Review is as in these examples:
- [[Wikipedia:Georgia|Georgia]], which looks on the saved page as Georgia.
- [[Ballotpedia:Laws governing the initiative process in Ohio|Laws governing the initiative process in Ohio]], which looks on the saved page as Laws governing the initiative process in Ohio.
- [[Sunshinereview:Los Angeles County, California|Los Angeles County, California]], which looks on the saved page as Los Angeles County, California.
Formatting commands
To use italics, surround the text with double apostrophes.
For bold text, use triple apostrophes.
If you want to super emphasize what you are writing, surround the text with five apostrophes.
If you are already comfortable with <tags>, those will work as well.
Italic, Bold, Boldly italicized!
In Wiki form: <i>Italic</i>, <b>Bold</b>, <i><b>Boldly italicized!</b></i>
You can strike out deleted text, or underline an important point.
In Wiki form: You can <strike>strike out deleted text</strike>, or <u>underline an important point</u>.
To divide your page, you can use a horizontal line by using <tags>:
or by typing horizontal dashes:
A new line will not start a new paragraph, however, leaving a blank line will.
(Click "edit" and look at this section to get a better idea of what that means.)
To put text in a box like this, simply put a space at the beginning of the line.
Bullet points and lists
- bullets are created by using asterisks (*)
- by doubling
- or tripling the asterisks up you can deepen your lists
- by doubling
You can also itemize with numbered lists:
- numbered lists are created by using the pound (#) sign
- at the beginning of each line
Creating article sections
Judgepedia articles can be subdivided into sections by using headers. To create a header, put double equal signs (==) around the section title. To create a sub-section, use three equal signs (===), and so on.
Once you have a certain amount of section headers, Judgepedia will automatically create a Table of Contents for you at the top of the page.
References
The way to cite on Judgepedia is exactly the same as scholarly citation: with footnotes.
When you have added information to a page that is from an online resource, it must be cited as follows:
<ref>[http://URL TO YOUR SOURCE ''The provenance of your source'', "The title of your source", the date it was published, (page #)]</ref>
For example, this citation:
Gerard Lynch was nominated by President Barack Obama for a judgeship in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals on April 2, 2009. <ref>[http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/President-Obama- Announces-Judge-Gerard-Lynch-for-United-States-Court-of-Appeals- for-the-Second-Circuit-Judge-Andre-Davis-for-the-United-States- Court-of-Appeals/ ''White House Press Release'', "President Obama Announces Judge Gerard Lynch for the Second Circuit", April 2, 2009]</ref>
Will appear like this in the "References" section of the page:
White House Press Release, "President Obama Announces Judge Gerard Lynch for the Second Circuit", April 2, 2009
At the bottom of the page, add this:
==References==
{{reflist}}
So that your citation has a place to go.
Anything else?
Is there an editing question you would like to see addressed here? Click on the "discussion" tab at the top of the page, and let us know. Or add it yourself! That is the fun of wikis, after all.
This Judgepedia article needs to be updated 