Now that you have created your userpage, we can explore how the Visual Editor dropdown menus work, moving from left to right.
Adding headings
- Click Edit to enter the Visual Editor.
- Look at the area of the screen indicated in the purple box above. Note the first menu options on the far left are Undo and Redo arrows.
- Type your username (as indicated in the green box above).
- Select the text you have just written.
- Select the Paragraph > Heading option from the dropdown menu. This will turn your username into a Heading.
Adding bold and italics
- Press the Return key and type an example sentence e.g. “I am learning how to edit Wikipedia“.
- Select one of the words in the example sentence e.g. learning
- Click the Style dropdown menu (indicated by A) and change the highlighted word to bold.
- Do the same again to change the highlighted word to italics.
Adding links
Links to other Wikipedia pages are the backbone of Wikipedia; enabling other readers to journey down the rabbit hole about a subject to aid their understanding. Please note: you need only link a page the first time it is mentioned in an article and not every single time.
- Type a phrase that will have a page on Wikipedia as an example sentence. e.g. “I am learning how to edit Wikipedia”.
- Select the word you are going to link e.g. Wikipedia.
- Click the Link menu (indicated by a chain link symbol).
- Click on the appropriate link. It should turn blue.
- Repeat with a new example sentence e.g. I live in Edinburgh.
Now that you have practised adding headings, bold and links let’s save the page. You should get in the habit of saving your Wikipedia edits regularly.
- Click the blue Save page button in the top right of the screen.
- Type a short edit summary of “Added headings, bold & links”.
- Click the blue Save page button once more to confirm.
NB: You may be asked to enter a Captcha code to confirm any saved edits. This is just a precautionary measure for the first day or two of a new account.