MediaWiki by default uses Wikitext (also known as Wiki markup or Wikicode), but there are Alternative parsers available as well. Wikitext is, however, by far the most common and that’s what we are going to talk about today.

The most common items you might need are Section headings, italics, bold and links to other pages. Let’s review those first, and then discuss some less common items.

Most Common Markup Elements

Section headings

A header is the title of a section of your page. These should be on their own line and surrounded by a number of = signs. The one you shouldn’t use is this

= Main Title =

because that’s meant for the title of the page, which MediaWiki does for you.

For a second level header, use two = signs like this:

== First Section ==

After that, just use more = signs, and match them before and after, like these:

=== First Sub Section ===
==== Sub-Sub Section ====

You can do this until 6 = signs:

====== Heading Level Six ======

When you include more than three section headings, MediaWiki will automatically create for you a Table of Contents on the page.

Bold

To make a word, or a few words bold, just enclose them with three apostrophes like this:

This word is '''bold''' and the rest is not.

or for a few words:

These word are '''bold and stand out''' and the rest are plain.

Italic

To make a word, or a few words italics, just enclose them with two apostrophes like this:

This word is ''italics'' and the rest is not.

or for a few words:

These word are ''italics and stand out'' and the rest are plain.

Bold and Italic

You can combine these as well and use 5 apostrophes around text to make it bold and italics.

Links

There are two kinds of link, internal and external. An internal link means a link to another page on your site. To create an internal link, you use the name of the page and surround it with these brackets: [[ ]] like this:

You could visit [[Cool Page]] on my site.

where I have a page called “Cool Page.”