Help:Editing

It's very easy to edit the contents of a wiki. It only takes a few clicks.


 * 1) Click the "" page tab at the top of the page.
 * 2) Make changes to the text.
 * 3) Click the "" button.

Simple as that!

Editing rules, editing conventions, and formatting
The number one rule of wiki editing, is to be bold. Dive in and make changes. Other people can correct mistakes later, so have confidence, and give it a try! There can be all kinds of editing conventions, rules, and philosophy governing the editing of wiki pages, but the "be bold" rule overrides these!

In general try to write clearly and concisely and make sure you are always aiming to do something which improves the wiki contents. An edit might be to contribute whole paragraphs or pages full of information, or it could be as simple as fixing a typo or spelling mistake.

When you need to use some type of formatting e.g. new headings or bold text, you do this using wiki syntax or the buttons in the edit toolbar above. See Help:Formatting for some of the common types of formatting used.

Edit Summary
Before you save a change, you can enter a short note in the  box describing your changes. Don't worry too much about this, or spend too much time thinking about it, but try to give a little description of what you just changed e.g. "fixed typo" or "added more information about sunflowers".

The summary gets stored alongside your edit, and allows people to track changes in the wiki more effectively.

Preview
It's a good idea to use the "" button to see what your change will look like, before you save it. This is also related to tracking changes because every time you save, this is displayed to others as a separate change. This isn't something to worry about too much, but it's good to get into the habit of eliminating mistakes in your own work, by using a preview before saving, rather than saving several minor corrections afterwards.

Show changes
Another option is the "" button which allows you to see the differences between the current version and your edited version.

Other types of editing
With wiki edits you can start a new page, move (or rename) a page, or even delete a page:

Remember you should always aim to improve the overall contents of the wiki with your edits.

Discussion
Every article has its own “talk page” where you can ask questions, make suggestions, or discuss corrections. You can do this by using Talk pages

There are several ways to start a new page. These can vary based on the type of page started, as well as the wiki and namespace.

Using Wikilinks
MediaWiki makes it very easy to link wiki pages using a standard syntax (see Links). If you (or anyone else) create a link to an article that doesn't exist yet, the link will be coloured red, like this.

Clicking a red link will take you to the edit page for the new article. Simply type your text, click save and the new page will be created.

Once the page has been created, the link will change from red to blue ( purple for pages you've visited) indicating that the article now exists.

Usually this is the best way to create a new page, because it means that right from the start, the page will be linked from at least one other place on the wiki (and typically you will want to mesh it into other related pages later). If you are creating a new page without creating any link to it, you may need to ask yourself: Does this page really fit in with the topics already covered in the wiki? Also, how are you expecting visitors to find this page? Normally there is no reason to create a page without first creating a red link to it.

From the search page
If you search for a page that doesn't exist (using the search box and “” button on the left of the page) then you will be provided with a link to create the new page.

Using the URL
You can use the wiki's URL for creating a new page. The URL to an article of the wiki is usually something like this:
 * or

If you replace  with the name of the page you wish to create, you will be taken to a blank page which indicates that no article of that name exists yet. Clicking the "" page tab at the top of the page will take you to the edit page for that article, where you can create the new page by typing your text, and clicking submit.

Create redirects to your new page
Don't forget to set up redirects when you create a page. If you think another person may search for the page you've created by using a different name or spelling, please create the proper redirect(s). See Help:Redirects

You can format your text by using wiki markup. This consists of normal characters like asterisks, single quotes or equal signs which have a special function in the wiki, sometimes depending on their position. For example, to format a word in italic, you include it in two pairs of single quotes like.

Text formatting markup
{| class="wikitable" ! Description ! width=40% | You type ! width=40% | You get ! colspan="3" style="background:#ABE" | character (inline) formatting – applies anywhere italic italic bold bold bold & italic bold & italic &lt;nowiki>no markup</nowiki&gt; no markup ! colspan="3" style="background:#ABE" | section formatting – only at the beginning of the line
 * Italic text
 * Italic text
 * Bold text
 * Bold text
 * Bold and italic
 * Bold and italic
 * Escape wiki markup
 * Escape wiki markup
 * Headings of different levels
 * Headings of different levels

Level 6

 * An article with 4 or more headings automatically creates a table of contents.

Level 6
Text above
 * Horizontal rule
 * Horizontal rule

Text below Text above

Text below Any other start ends the list. Any other start ends the list.
 * Bullet list
 * Bullet list
 * Start each line
 * with an asterisk (*).
 * More asterisks gives deeper
 * and deeper levels.
 * Line breaks don't break levels.
 * But jumping levels creates empty space.
 * Start each line
 * with an asterisk (*).
 * More asterisks gives deeper
 * and deeper levels.
 * Line breaks don't break levels.
 * But jumping levels creates empty space.
 * But jumping levels creates empty space.
 * Numbered list
 * Numbered list
 * 1) Start each line
 * 2) with a number sign (#).
 * 3) More number signs gives deeper
 * 4) and deeper
 * 5) levels.
 * 6) Line breaks don't break levels.
 * 7) But jumping levels creates empty space.
 * 8) Blank lines

Any other start also ends the list.
 * 1) end the list and start another.
 * 1) Start each line
 * 2) with a number sign (#).
 * 3) More number signs gives deeper
 * 4) and deeper
 * 5) levels.
 * 6) Line breaks don't break levels.
 * 7) But jumping levels creates empty space.
 * 8) Blank lines
 * 1) Blank lines

Any other start also ends the list.
 * 1) end the list and start another.
 * Definition list
 * item 1
 * definition 1
 * item 1
 * definition 1


 * item 2
 * definition 2-1
 * definition 2-2


 * item 1
 * definition 1
 * definition 1


 * item 2
 * definition 2-1
 * definition 2-2


 * Indent text
 * Single indent
 * Double indent
 * Multiple indent
 * Double indent
 * Multiple indent

This workaround may be controversial from the viewpoint of accessibility.
 * Single indent
 * Double indent
 * Multiple indent
 * Multiple indent


 * Mixture of different types of list
 * Mixture of different types of list
 * 1) one
 * 2) two
 * 3) * two point one
 * 4) * two point two
 * 5) three
 * 6) ; three item one
 * three def one
 * 1) four
 * four def one
 * this looks like a continuation
 * and is often used
 * instead of &lt;nowiki> &lt;/nowiki>
 * 1) five
 * 2) five sub 1
 * 3) five sub 1 sub 1
 * 4) five sub 2

The usage of  and   for breaking a line within an item may also be controversial. Start each line with a space. Text is preformatted and markups can be done
 * 1) one
 * 2) two
 * 3) * two point one
 * 4) * two point two
 * 5) three
 * 6) ; three item one
 * three def one
 * 1) four
 * four def one
 * this looks like a continuation
 * and is often used
 * instead of
 * 1) five
 * 2) five sub 1
 * 3) five sub 1 sub 1
 * 4) five sub 2
 * Preformatted text
 * Preformatted text
 * Preformatted text

This way of preformatting only applies to section formatting. Character formatting markups are still effective. Start each line with a space. Text is preformatted and markups can be done (before the ).
 * Preformatted text blocks
 * Start with a space in the first column,
 * Start with a space in the first column,

Then your block format will be   maintained. This is good for copying in code blocks:

def function: """documentation string"""

if True: print True else: print False Start with a space in the first column. (before the ).

Then your block format will be   maintained.

This is good for copying in code blocks:

def function: """documentation string"""

if True: print True else: print False
 * }

Paragraphs
MediaWiki ignores single line breaks. To start a new paragraph, leave an empty line. You can force a line break within a paragraph with the HTML tag.

HTML tags
Some HTML tags are allowed in ictEduWiki, for example,  ,   and. These apply anywhere you insert them.

Inserting Symbols
Symbols and other special characters not available on your keyboard can be inserted through a special sequence of characters. Those sequences are called HTML Entities. For example, the following sequence (entity) &amp;rarr; when inserted will be shown as right arrow HTML symbol &rarr; and &amp;mdash; when inserted will be shown as an em dash HTML symbol &mdash;

Hover any character to find out the symbol that produces it. Some symbols not available in the current font will appear as empty squares.

See the list of all HTML entities on the Wikipedia article List of HTML entities. Additionally, MediaWiki supports two non-standard entity reference sequences:  and   which are both considered equivalent to   which is a Right-to-left mark (Used when combining right to left languages with left or right languages in the same page)

HTML tags and symbol entities displayed themselves (with and without interpreting them)

 * &amp;amp;euro; &rarr; &amp;euro;


 * &lt;span style="color:red;text-decoration:line-through;">Typo to be corrected&lt;/span> &rarr;  Typo to be corrected 


 * &amp;lt;span style="color:red;text-decoration:line-through;">Typo to be corrected">Typo to be corrected&amp;lt;/span>  &rarr; &lt;span style="color:red;"text-decoration:line-through;">Typo to be corrected&lt;/span>

There are five types of links in MediaWiki:
 * 1) Internal links to other pages in the wiki
 * 2) External links to other websites
 * 3) External links to internal pages in the wiki
 * 4) Interwiki links to other websites registered to the wiki in advance
 * 5) Interlanguage links to other websites registered as other language versions of the wiki

Internal links
To add an internal link, enclose the name of the page you want to link to in double square brackets. When you save the page, you'll see the new link pointing to your page. If the page exists already it is displayed in blue, if it does not, in red. Selflinks to the current page are not transformed in URLs but displayed in bold. (If you really want to link to the current page, use an anchor (see below), or current page which always links to the top.)

The first letter of the target page is automatically capitalized, unless otherwise set by the admins, and spaces are represented as underscores (typing an underscore in the link will have a similar effect as typing a space, but is not recommended, since the underscore will also be shown in the text).

External links to internal pages
To add an external link to a page on the same wiki using parameters, you may need to use external link syntax. Enclose the name of the page you want to link to in single square brackets. When you save the page, you'll see the new link pointing to your page, with an arrow icon after it. This is often useful if you want to link internally on a wiki, but need query parameters in the URL, which may not work with normal internal links in some circumstances.

How to avoid auto-links
By default, when you write a URL as is, it will be transformed to an external link.

To avoid that effect, put the URL between  tags as in: http://mediawiki.org

Interwiki links
Interwiki links are links with the internal link markup to a website registered in advance. For example, you can link to the Sunflower article on http://en.wikipedia.org by typing, which will result in a link Sunflower. This is because  is registered to your wiki by default with the prefix of. This link may not work properly, if the admin of your wiki has changed the setting. Unlike internal links, interwiki links do not use page existence detection, so an interwiki link will appear blue even if the page does not exist on the remote wiki.

Similar to internal page links, you can create piped links, with alternate link label, e.g., this is the link big yellow flower.

Basically this is an abbreviation for longer URLs. A very similar link could be created as a normal external link by typing, but interwiki links allow you to type out an easy and compact link, almost as if you are linking to a page on your own wiki.

More details are at. To edit the on your site, see the.

Interlanguage links
If your wiki has other language versions, you may find “interlanguage links” in the sidebar, just below toolbox in the box named “.”

Interlanguage links behave similarly to interwiki links, except that they are listed in the sidebar. To create an interlanguage link from a page, just type  wherever you like in the page; the language prefix is the prefix specified at your wiki for the other language version (typically the ISO language code).

If you want to make the interlanguage link appear in the content of the page, you can add a colon before the language prefix:
 * &rarr; en:Sunflower

When link is both interwiki and interlanguage, the order is Sunflower. This page explains the image syntax when editing the wiki. You or another user must usually upload an image before you can use it on a page.

Images that are stored on a MediaWiki server are usually rendered by using the  namespace prefix (but the legacy   namespace prefix is still supported as a synonym) as the target of a MediaWiki link. The alternate  namespace prefix is also usable to reference the original media file content (for rendering or downloading it separately, out of any MediaWiki page).

Supported media types for images
The following file formats are supported by default:
 * .jpg or .jpeg : bitmap image compressed in the standard JPEG format (this lossy format is most suitable for photographs).
 * .png : bitmap image in the Portable Network Graphics format (specified by the W3 Consortium).
 * .gif : bitmap image in the legacy Graphics Interchange Format.

Other formats used on Wikimedia, and commonly enabled elsewhere (these may require extra set-up beyond what is enabled by default):
 * .svg : scalable image in the Scalable Vector Graphics format (specified by the W3 Consortium).
 * .tiff : Tagged image format. Often used for high-resolution archival photographs. <-- Often used with Extension:PagedTiffHandler. -->
 * .ogg, .oga, .ogv : Ogg multimedia (audio or video) Not an image format, but treated similarly. <-- Often used with Extension:OggHandler -->
 * .pdf : multipaged documents in the Portable Document Format (initially specified by Adobe). <-- Often used in conjunction with Extension:PdfHandler -->
 * .djvu : multipaged bitmap documents in the DejaVu format (most often, scans of books). <-- -->
 * Only a single page of a .pdf or .djvu file is shown at one time.

Other media types may be supported, but it may not be possible to display them inline.

Syntax
The full syntax for displaying an image is:

where options can be zero or more of the following, separated by pipes (|):
 * Format option: one of border and/or frameless, frame, thumb (or thumbnail);
 * Controls how the rendered image is formatted and embedded in the rest of the page.
 * Resizing option: one of
 * {width}px — Resizes the image to fit within the given maximum width in pixels, without restricting its height;
 * x{height}px — Resizes the image to fit within the given maximum height in pixels, without restricting its width;
 * {width}x{height}px — Resizes the image to fit within the given width and height in pixels;
 * upright — Resizes an image to fit within reasonable dimensions, according to user preferences (suitable for images whose height is larger than width).
 * Note that the image will always retain its aspect ratio, and can only be reduced (not increased) in size unless it's in a scalable media type (bitmap images cannot be scaled up).
 * The default maximum size depends on the format and the internal image dimensions (according to its media type).
 * Horizontal alignment option: one of left, right, center, none;
 * Controls the horizontal alignment (and inline/block or floating styles) of the image within a text (no default value).
 * Vertical alignment option: one of baseline, sub, super, top, text-top, middle, bottom, text-bottom;
 * Controls the vertical alignment of a non-floating inline image with the text before or after the image, and in the same block (the default vertical alignment is middle).
 * Link option: one of
 * link={target} — Allows to change the target (to an arbitrary page title, or URL) of the generated link, activable on the rendered image surface; e.g.  renders as Example.jpg (external link), or   renders as Example.jpg (internal link).
 * link= (with an empty value) — Displays an image without any activable link; e.g.   renders as Example.jpg.
 * ! Link does not work with thumb, thumbnail or frame.


 * Other specific options:
 * alt={alternative text} — Defines the alternative text (maps to the HTML attribute   of the generated   element) of an image that will be rendered if either the referenced image cannot be downloaded and embedded, or if the support media must use the alternative description text (e.g. when using a Braille reader or with accessibility options set by the user in its browser).
 * page={number} — Renders the specified page number (currently only applicable when showing a .djvu or .pdf file).

The options can be given in any order. If the given options conflict each other, the latter is applied, except for the format options, where the options take the priority in the order of: frame; thumb (or thumbnail); frameless and/or border.

If a parameter does not match any of the other possibilities, it is assumed to be the caption text. Caption text shows below the image in thumb and frame formats, or as mouseover text in border, frameless formats or when the format is omitted. Caption text displayed in the thumb and frame formats may contain wiki links and other formatting. In the other options, wiki-formatting will not work though transclusion will.

If no caption text is supplied, a caption is automatically created showing the file name. To completely remove the caption, set it to. For example,  renders as.

Format
The following table shows the effect of all available formats.

When the height of an image in thumbnail is bigger than its width (i.e. in portrait orientation rather than landscape) and you find it too large, you may try the option, which will try to adjust its size to a more desirable size by reducing the height instead of the width. The alternative is to specify the desired maximum height (in pixels) explicitly.

Note that by writing, you can use a different image for the thumbnail.

Size and frame
Among different formats, the effect of the size parameter may be different, as shown below.
 * For how it appears when its size is not specified, see Format section above.
 * When the format is not specified, or only ed, the size can be both reduced and enlarged to any specified size.
 * In the examples below, the original size of the image is 400 × 267 pixels.
 * An image with  always ignores the size specification, the original image will be reduced if it exceeds the maximum size defined in user preferences.
 * The size of an image with  can be reduced, but can not be enlarged beyond the original size of the image.

Horizontal alignment
Note that when using the  or   formats, the default horizontal alignment will be.

Vertical alignment
The vertical alignment options take effect only if the image is rendered as an inline element and is not floating. They alter the way the inlined image will be vertically aligned with the text present in the same block before and/or after this image on the same rendered row.

Note that the rendered line of text where inline images are inserted (and the lines of text rendered after the current one) may be moved down (this will increase the line-height conditionally by additional line spacing, just as it may occur with spans of text with variable font sizes, or with superscripts and subscripts) to allow the image height to be fully displayed with this alignment constraint. Toggle source code view

To show the alignment result more clearly, the text spans are overlined and underlined, the line-height is increased to 200% of the font-height, the font-height is emphasized with a yellow background covering the line margins, and the full line-height is shown with a dark gray border; additionally images of different sizes are aligned, including one with an additional border that adds some pixels to its specified dimensions and slightly changes its vertical alignment:

 text top: text

 text text-top: text

 text super: text

 text baseline: text

 text sub: text

 text default: text

<p style="border:1px solid #AAA;background:#FF0;padding:0;font-size:150%;line-height:2"> text middle: text

<p style="border:1px solid #AAA;background:#FF0;padding:0;font-size:150%;line-height:2"> text text-bottom: text

<p style="border:1px solid #AAA;background:#FF0;padding:0;font-size:150%;line-height:2"> text bottom: text

Notes:
 * 1) The "middle" vertical alignment position of the image (which is also the default) usually refers to the middle between the x-height and the baseline of the text (on which the vertical middle of the image will be aligned, and on which usually the text may be overstroke), but not to the middle of the line-height of the font-height that refers to the space between the "text-top" and "text-bottom" positions ; the font-height excludes:
 * 2) * the additional line separation spacing normally divided equally into two line-margins (here 0.5em, according to line-height set to 200%) above and below the font-height).
 * 3) * the additional line spacing which may be added by superscripts and subscripts.
 * 4) However, if the image height causes its top or bottom position to go above or below the normal full line-height of text, the middle position will be adjusted after the increasing the top and/or bottom line-margins so that the image can fit and align properly, and all images (including those with smaller heights) will be vertically centered on the adjusted middle position (for computing the effective line-height, the text of each rendered row with the larger font-height will be considered).
 * 5) The "text-top" and "text-bottom" alignment positions also excludes the extra line spacing added by superscripts and subscripts, but not the additional line-spacing defined by the line-height.
 * 6) The "top" and "bottom" alignment positions take into account all these extra line spacings (including superscripts and subscripts, if they are present in a rendered line span). When the image alignment constrains the image to grow above or below the normal line-spacing, and the image is not absolutely positioned, the image will cause the "top" and "bottom" positions to be adjusted (just like superscripts and subscripts), so the effective line-height between rendered lines of text will be higher.
 * 7) The "underline", "overline" and "overstrike" text-decoration positions should be somewhere within these two limits and may depend on the type and height of fonts used (the superscript and subscript styles may be taken into account in some browsers, but usually these styles are ignored and the position of these decorations may not be adjusted); so these decorations normally don't affect the vertical position of images, relatively to the text.

Stopping the text flow
On occasion it is desirable to stop text (or other inline non-floating images) from flowing around a floating image. Depending on the web browser's screen resolution and such, text flow on the right side of an image may cause a section header (for instance, == My Header == ) to appear to the right of the image, instead of below it, as a user may expect. The text flow can be stopped by placing  <br style="clear: both" />  before the text that should start below the floating image.

All images rendered as blocks (including non-floating centered images, left- or right-floating images, as well as framed or thumbnailed floating images) are implicitly breaking the surrounding lines of text (terminating the current block of text before the image, and creating a new paragraph for the text after them). They will then stack vertically along their left or right alignment margin (or along the center line between these margins for centered images).

Altering the default link target
The following table shows how to alter the link target (whose default is the image description page) or how to remove it. Changing the link does not alter the format described in the previous sections.

Warning :
 * The licencing requirements on your wiki may not allow you to remove all links to the description page that displays the required authors attributions, the copyrights statements, the applicable licencing terms, or a more complete description of the rendered image (including its history of modifications).
 * If you change or remove the target link of an image, you will then have to provide somewhere else on your page an explicit link to this description page, or to display the copyright and author statement and a link to the applicable licence, if they are different from the elements applicable to the embedding page itself.
 * Your wiki policy may restrict the use of the alternate link parameter, or may even enforce a prohibition of alternate link parameters for embedded media files (in which case, the link parameter will be ignored), or may only accept them after validation by authorized users or administrators.

Gallery syntax
It's easy to make a gallery of thumbnails with the  tag. The syntax is:

Optional gallery attributes
The gallery tag itself takes several additional parameters, specified as attribute name-value pairs:

Link to description page
If you put a colon before , the image will not be embedded and the link will lead to the description page of the file.



results in



Link to another page
This will make a 50px width picture with a link to the page MediaWiki:





Link directly to the media file
You can use the pseudo-namespace “   ” to link directly to a file without rendering it, bypassing the description page.



results in



The same result can be achieved by adding a colon before the namespace (works with categories too):



You can also use:

/

which can be used to link to a potential file, even if it doesn't exist. You can also use:

which generates an external URL to the file inline:

Requisites
Before using images in your page, the system administrator of your wiki must have enabled file uploads and a user has to upload the file. System administrators may also set the wiki to accept files from foreign repositories, such as the Wikimedia Commons. For server side image resizing it is necessary to have a scaler configured (such as GD2, ImageMagick, etc.).

Files at other websites
You can link to an external file available online using the same syntax used for linking to an external web page. With these syntaxes, the image will not be rendered, but only the text of the link to this image will be displayed. 

Or with a different displayed text: link text here

Additional MediaWiki markup or HTML/CSS formatting (for inline elements) is permitted in this displayed text (with the exception of embedded links that would break the surrounding link): Example  rich   link text  here. which renders as: Example  rich   link text  here.

If it is enabled on your wiki ($wgAllowExternalImages), you can also embed external images. To do that, simply insert the image's url: http://url.for/some/image.png Currently, embedded images cannot be resized, but they may be formatted by surrounding MediaWiki markup or HTML/CSS code.

If this wiki option is not enabled, the image will not be embedded but rendered as a textual link to the external site, just like above. Tables may be authored in wiki pages using either XHTML table elements directly, or using wikicode formatting to define the table. XHTML table elements and their use are well described on various web pages and will not be discussed here. The benefit of wikicode is that the table is constructed of character symbols which tend to make it easier to perceive the table structure in the article editing view compared to XHTML table elements. As a general rule, it is best to avoid using a table unless you need one. Table markup often complicates page editing.

Wiki table markup summary

 * The above marks must start on a new line except the double  and   for optionally adding consecutive cells to a line. However, blank spaces at the beginning of a line are ignored.
 * XHTML attributes. Each mark, except table end, optionally accepts one or more XHTML attributes. Attributes must be on the same line as the mark. Separate attributes from each other with a single space.
 * Cells and caption ( or ,   or  , and  ) hold content. So separate any attributes from content with a single pipe . Cell content may follow on same line or on following lines.
 * Table and row marks ( and  ) do not directly hold content. Do not add pipe  after their optional attributes. If you erroneously add a pipe after attributes for the table mark or row mark the parser will delete it and your final attribute if it was touching the erroneous pipe!
 * Content may (a) follow its cell mark on the same line after any optional XHTML attributes or (b) on lines below the cell mark. Content that uses wiki markup that itself needs to start on a new line, such as lists, headings, or nested tables, must be on its own new line.
 * Pipe character as content. To insert a pipe character into a table use the &lt;nowiki&gt; &lt;/nowiki&gt; escaping markup

Basics
The following table lacks borders and good spacing but shows the simplest wiki markup table structure.

{| cellspacing="0" border="1" !style="width:50%"|You type !style="width:50%"|You get


 * }

The cells in the same row can be listed on one line separated by  (two pipe symbols). If the text in the cell contains a line break, use  instead.

{| cellspacing="0" border="1" !style="width:50%"|You type !style="width:50%"|You get


 * }

Extra spaces within cells in the wiki markup, as in the wiki markup below, do not affect the actual table rendering.

{| cellspacing="0" border="1" !style="width:50%"|You type !style="width:50%"|You get


 * }

You can have longer text or more complex wiki syntax inside table cells, too:

{| cellspacing="0" border="1" !style="width:50%"|You type !style="width:50%"|You get


 * }

Table headers
Table headers can be created by using " " (exclamation mark) instead of " " (pipe symbol). Headers usually show up bold and centered by default.

Note: When using attributes as in the heading 'Item' a vertical bar '|' is used for separation. Not an exclamation character '!'.

Caption
A table caption can be added to the top of any table as follows.

XHTML attributes
You can add XHTML attributes to tables. For the authoritative source on these, see the W3C's HTML 4.01 Specification page on tables.

Attributes on tables
Placing attributes after the table start tag applies attributes to the entire table.

{| cellspacing="0" border="1" !style="width:50%"|You type !style="width:50%"|You get


 * }

Attributes on cells
You can put attributes on individual cells. For example, numbers may look better aligned right.

You can also use cell attributes when you are listing multiple cells on a single line. Note that the cells are separated by, and within each cell the attribute(s) and value are separated by.

{| cellspacing="0" border="1" !style="width:50%"|You type !style="width:50%"|You get


 * }

Attributes on rows
You can put attributes on individual rows, too.

{| cellspacing="0" border="1" !style="width:50%"|You type !style="width:50%"|You get


 * }

Simple one-pixel table border
The default table formatting uses the "border-collapse: separate" model, which adds table cell spacing (which also separates the table outer border from its content cells). Even with a zero cellspacing, the borders of consecutive cells (and of the overall table container) will add up, so to get a one-pixel separation between cells, you need to selectively remove one or more of the four borders of cells.

Such tables may be formatted more simply, using the "border-collapse: collapse" CSS property; in this table formatting model, the cellspacing attribute (or the CSS "border-spacing:" property) and the table's "padding:" CSS property is ignored and only the larger border of adjacent inner cells (or the table border for outer cells) will be used.

An example of the above for one-pixel table border, using each model (without need for external extensions):

{|border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" !|You type !width="200"|You get <pre style="font-size: 80%"> <pre style="font-size: 80%">


 * }

Notes :
 * When using the "border-width:" CSS shortcut property, the order of the four space-separated specified values is: top, right, bottom, left. As an example from above:
 * "border-width: 0 1px 0 0"
 * When there are fewer than 4 values, the value for left takes its default from the value for right, the value for bottom takes its default from the value for top, and the value for right takes its default from the value for top.


 * The HTML attributes (such as "width=", "border=", "cellspacing=", "cellpadding=") do not need any length unit (the pixel unit is assumed). The CSS style properties (which override the HTML attributes) require an explicit length unit (if the value is not 0) such as "px" for the pixel.

HTML colspan and rowspan
You can use HTML colspan and rowspan attributes on cells for advanced layout.

{| cellspacing="0" border="1" !style="width:50%"|You type !style="width:50%"|You get


 * }

With HTML attributes and CSS styles
CSS style attributes can be added with or without other HTML attributes.

{| cellspacing="0" border="1" !style="width:50%"|You type !style="width:50%"|You get <pre style="white-space:-moz-pre-wrap; white-space:-pre-wrap; white-space:-o-pre-wrap; white-space:pre-wrap; word-wrap:break-word; word-break:break-all;">


 * }

Attributes
Attributes can be added to the caption and headers as follows.

{| cellspacing="0" border="1" !style="width:50%"|You type !style="width:50%"|You get <pre style="white-space:-moz-pre-wrap; white-space:-pre-wrap; white-space:-o-pre-wrap; white-space:pre-wrap; word-wrap:break-word; word-break:break-all;">


 * }

Column width
Column width can be added as follows.

You type: <pre style="white-space:-moz-pre-wrap; white-space:-pre-wrap; white-space:-o-pre-wrap; white-space:pre-wrap; word-wrap:break-word; word-break:break-all;">

You get:

Accessibility of table header cells
Table header cells do not explicitly specify which table data cells they apply to (those on their right on the same row, or those below them on the same column). When the table is rendered in a visual 2D environment, this is usually easy to infer.

However when tables are rendered on non-visual medias, you can help the browser to determine which table header cell applies to the description of any selected cell (in order to repeat its content in some accessibility helper) using a scope="row" or scope="col" attribute on table header cells. In most cases with simple tables, you'll use scope="col" on all header cells of the first row, and scope="row" on the first cell of the following rows:

{| cellspacing="0" border="1" !style="width:50%"|You type !style="width:50%"|You get <pre style="white-space:-moz-pre-wrap; white-space:-pre-wrap; white-space:-o-pre-wrap; white-space:pre-wrap; word-wrap:break-word; word-break:break-all;">


 * }

Negative numbers
If you start a cell on a new line with a negative number with a minus sign (or a parameter that evaluates to a negative number), your table can get broken, because the characters  will be parsed as the wiki markup for table row, not table cell. To avoid this, insert a space before the value or use in-line cell markup.

CSS vs Attributes
Table borders specified through CSS rather than the border attribute will render incorrectly in a small subset of text browsers.

Common attributes for columns, column groups and row groups
The ictEduWiki syntax for tables currently offers no support for specifying common attributes for columns (with the HTML element ), column groups (HTML element  ) and row groups (HTML elements ,  ). Those standard HTML elements are not accepted even in their HTML or XHTML syntax.

All the rows and cells (header or data) of the table are rendered within a single implicit row group (HTML element ) without any attributes or styles.