Undergraduate Research in History

This is a basic guide to Wikipedia editing for history students at Boston College. It will take you through basic commands in Wikipedia, how to set up a reference, the anatomy of page, and the design of the info box.

For the full set of Wikipedia tutorials, head over to Wikipedia:Tutorial.

Where necessary, we use the Wikipedia page on Gertrude Bell as a sample. 

This page has a lot on it. You can use the following anchors (links down the page) to jump straight to a relevant box.

This is a quick chart to the basic commands you'll likely want as you edit a page in Wikipedia or build a new one. 

Function	What it shows when editing	What it shows on the page
Bold	'''Bold text'''	Bold text
Italic	''Italic text''	Italic Text
External link	[http://www.example.com link title]	link title
Internal link	[[Link title]]	Link title
Insert image	[[File:Example.jpg|thumbnail]]
Insert Footnotes*	<ref>Insert footnote text here</ref>	[1]
Insert Notes	{{efn|This would be a note}}	[a]
Sign talk comments (with time stamp)	--~~~~	--Username (talk) 12:21, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

*Note that Wikipedia requires you to cite to where you got your information using references. Check out the information below for how those citations are coded.

You can check out the full Wikipedia guide for setting up references. That said, here's a sample of what's going on:

Function	What it shows when editing	What it shows on the page
Reference	<ref>{{citation |last1=Meyer |first1=Karl E. |first2=Shareen B. |last2=Brysac  |title=Kingmakers: The Invention of the Modern Middle East |location=New York |publisher=W.W. Norton & Co. |year=2008 |page=162}}</ref>
Breakdown	{{|last1 ... |first1 ... |first2 ... |last2 ... |title ... |location ... |publisher ... |year ... |page}}
Citation	{{cite book|first=Gertrude|last=Bell|title=Poems from the Divan of Hafiz|place=London|date=1897}}

Breakdown of markup for journal article:

(Example on right with two references: one web and one journal article)

{{cite journal : opens the citation and tell Wikipedia how to format the subsequent tags

|last1= : the last name of the first author

|first1= : first name of the first author

|date= : the date of publication

|title= : the title of the journal article

|url= : clean URL where readers can access the article

|journal= : title of the journal

|volume= : journal volume number

|issue= : number of issue in volume

|pages= : page range for article

|doi= : this is the document object identifier

|access-date= date you accessed the article last

}} : closes the reference

There are a few parts to your page that you will (almost definitely) want to have using the Gertrude Bell Wikipedia page for samples:

Function	What it shows when editing	What it shows on the page
Short description	{{short description| ...}} Sample in coding: {{short description|English writer, traveller, political officer and archaeologist}}	Not visible on page
Date guide	{{Use dmy dates|date=July 2018}} Sample in coding: {{birth date|1868|07|14|df=y}}	14 July 1868
Infobox person	{{Infobox person ... }}	See below
Table of Contents	Automatically generated when more than three subheadings used.
Subsections	==Early life==
Sub, subsections	===Cairo and Basra===
Notes	==Notes== {{notelist}}
References	==References== {{Reflist|33em}}
Bibliography	==Bibliography==
Writings by ...	===Writings by ...===
Biographies of ...	===Biographies of ...===
Other sources	===Other sources===
External Links	==External links== {{commons category|... }} {{wikisource author}}
Authority Control	{{Authority control}}
Categories	{{DEFAULTSORT:Bell, Gertrude}} [[Category:1868 births]] [[Category:1926 deaths]]

To create the infobox that appears on the right of a Wikipedia page for people (or movies, etc.) copy and paste the "Infobox" coding below. Fill in information you know and leave any you don't blank. 

{{Infobox person
| name               =
| image              =
| imagesize       =     
| caption            = 
| birth_name         = 
| birth_date         = {{birth date and age|YEAR|Mo|Da}}
| birth_place        = [[City]], Country
| death_date         = 
| death_place        = 
| occupation         =
| nationality  = 
| education    =
| era          =
| known_for    =
| years_active       =
| parents      =
| children           = 
| relatives          = 
| website            = 
| signature          = 
| spouse             = 
| works              = 
| awards             = 
}}