Wiki-Syntax Text

On this page, you'll learn how to format text on Wiki pages and other area that support Wiki formatting (including articles, forums, and blogs).

The Markup Language Wiki-Syntax

The markup language used on a Wiki page is most commonly called Wiki Syntax. It uses common characters in uncommon ways (or character combinations that are not normally used together) and provides them with a special meaning. Some of the character combinations only work at the beginning of a line, while others can be inserted anywhere in the text and are active until they are turned off.

Wiki-Syntax uses a character repeated twice for most functions, but it also has a few 2-character combinations. With a 2-character combination, the characters are reversed when the function is turned off. MonoSpaced Text provides a good example of this; the Minus (-) and Plus (+) characters are used to start the using MonoSpaced Text and a Plus (+) and Minus (-) characters specifies the end of it.

The following sections explain most of this.

Quick Reference - Basic Text Formatting

Desired Formatting	Syntax	Result	Since
Bold	__text__	text
Centered	::text::	text
Color Font	~~blue:text~~	text
Italic	''text''	text
Monospaced	-+text+-	text
Underlined	===text===	text
Text box	^text^	text
Deleted	--text--	text	3.0
Display syntax	~np~ __not bold__ ~/np~	__not bold__

Basic Text Formatting

The Wiki-Syntax given in this section can be located anywhere in the text so that specific characters, words, or sentences can be emphasized.

Color Font

Text can be any color you want it to be. Two Tildes (~) are used followed by the name of a color and a Colon (:) to specify the start of the Colored Text. Two other Tildes (~) are used to end the Colored Text.



Color font can also be specified using HTML colors. HTML colors use 3 pairs of Hex numbers; one for Red, Blue, & Green so that 00 00 00 would produce white. The syntax is two Tildes (~) followed by the Pound (#) character and the Hex Numbers with a Colon (:) followed by the text to be colored. Two Tildes (~) mark the end of the Colored Text.



As of 3.0, the syntax was enhanced to also support background color changing.

(click the [+] to open)

Web-Safe HTML Colors

[+]

Bold Text

Two Underscore (_) characters are used to make text Bold.

Italic Text

Two Single Quote (') characters are used to make text Italic.

Underlined Text

Three Equal (=) characters are used to underline text.

Strikethrough text

Centered Text

Two Colon (:) characters are used to Center text. The Centered Text can be centered within a Box, a Table, or almost anything else.

Monospaced Text for Code

Monospaced Text is useful when displaying Code and can be created in two ways. The easiest is to start a new line with one or more spaces. The Minus (-) and Plus (+) character combination can also be used to specify a Monospaced Text. See also PluginMono for another way to apply the Monospace font.


If using a Monospaced Font, be sure to keep the line length short. If the lines are too long, they will push the right column out of the browser display area.
The Leading Space Monospaced Font is disabled on many sites.

Superscript and subscript

Use the {TAG} plugin (also see PluginTag).



Another alternative is to use the {SUB} and {SUP} plugins which are documented at PluginSub and PluginSup.

Text box

Apply one caret at start and end of text to be in a box.

Example: ^This Text is in a box^ produces:



NOTE: This CSS style is called "simplebox" and may look different or may not exist, depending on your theme CSS.

Plain Text

To turn off tiki formatting, surround your text with 'np' a.k.a. 'no processing' tags

Example: ~np~ This ''text'' is __not__ being ===formatted=== ~/np~ produces:

This ''text'' is __not__ being ===formatted===

NOTE: np tags cannot be used within an np block. To display an unprocessed ~np~ tag, escape all the characters (not just the tildes) while in normal processing mode:

~126~~110~~112~~126~ produces: ~np~
~126~~47~~110~~112~~126~ produces: ~/np~

Headings

Headings are formed by starting the line with one, two, or three exclamation marks ("!", "!!", or "!!!").

Numbered Headings

In tiki 2.0 and above, you can create numbered headings using a combination of the ! and # characters

• !# My Heading will produce "1.0 My Heading"
• !!# My Secondary Heading will produce "1.1 My Secondary Heading"
• !!!# My Tertiary Heading will produce "1.1.1 My Tertiary Heading"

See: Headings

Indent

Indent is formed by the combination of the ; and : characters. ; must appear at the beginning of a line and : must appear between introduction text and the indented text. The introduction text portion is useful for forming definition type indention like Example 1 below. However the introduction text can be eliminated by simply including ;: together followed by the text as shown in Example 2.

Using Square Brackets

If you wish to include square brackets in your text (i.e. as regular text and not a link) simply add an additional open bracket to start. E.g.

[[this would not be a link]

Would render like this...

[this would not be a link]

Non-breaking space

Use ~hs~ to add the HTML " " for a non-breaking space.

Comments

Wiki Comments

~tc~ this is a tiki comment ~/tc~

Will be kept in the file but not seen when the page or page source is viewed

HTML Comments

~hc~ this is an HTML comment ~/hc~

Will be kept in the file and will generate an HTML comment of the form

<!-- this is an HTML comment -->

it will not be seen when the page is viewed but will be seen when the page source is viewed.

Displaying code

You enter code blocks by enclosing the block between CODE() and CODE tags (you need to put curly braces around the tags). Note this is a smarty construct, not a Wiki syntax.

To Indent a Text Block

Enclose text in a blockquote using HTML to indent a section / block of text.
<blockquote>
text
text
text
</blockquote>
This will display as:

text
text
text

You can also use the indent code ( ;: ), and line break code ( %%% ), like so:
;:text %%% text %%% text

Useful Links

• The Color Picker II is located at http://www.pagetutor.com/pagetutor/makapage/picker/
• WebDevlopper extension for Mozilla Firefox
• The wiki syntax is not standardised across applications. There is an initiative to publish the Wiki-Syntax as an RFC from the IETF. See [http://tikiwiki.org/RFCWiki|RFCWik

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