Help:Printing
This help page is a how-to guide. It details processes or procedures of some aspect(s) of Wikipedia's norms and practices. It is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, and may reflect varying levels of consensus and vetting. |
This page in a nutshell: To print a Wikipedia page, select File → Print from your web browser, or click on the browser print icon. |
In general, printing a Wikipedia
The
Certain page elements normally do not print; these include
Printable version
The default Vector skin has a selection in the tools menu at the top-right for 'Printable version'. This printable version is often misunderstood, as it is not exactly a print preview. It does not show page numbers, headers and footers applied by your browser. For a proper print preview, use the one supplied by your browser.
Print page is not needed for any modern browser, as these browsers will parse the media="print"
CSS styles included in the markup of Wikipedia pages. The print rules are applied automatically when the page is printed or previewed from the browser.
Printable version does not apply @media print
rules from user style sheets— see below.
CSS
MediaWiki provides a print specific styling. This style sheet can be edited only by the developers.
The Wikipedia specific print style sheet is at MediaWiki:Print.css. This style sheet can supplement and override the base; it can only be edited by interface administrators.
Classes
MediaWiki:Print.css defines certain classes that are non-printable, specifically navbox, infobox.sisterproject, editlink, noprint, metadata, dablink. For example: since {{navbox}} uses the navbox class, any elements based on it will not print.
@media print
CSS media types define the rules for different types of presentation media. The normal display uses @media screen
rules; printing rules can be defined with defined @media print
.
Controlling print
Elements
When creating a new element that should not print, the noprint class can be applied; for example:
<span class="noprint">foo</span>
Here, the content foo would display, but not print. You can also use {{
noprint
class.
Personal customization
Readers with accounts can modify their Special:MyPage/skin.css to customize their individual printing experience. Remember that rules using @media print
will show— or not show if that is the intent —in print preview but not printable version.
- Print URLs for references in citation templates
/* print URLs for references */
#content cite a.external.text:after {display: inline;}
- Note: URLs will always print for references that do not use citation templates
- Do not print references
/* do not print references */
@media print {
ol.references {display: none;}
}
- Change the print font size
/* save ink and paper with very small fonts */
@media print {
#footer,
#content,
body { font-size: 8pt !important; }
h1 { font-size: 17pt }
h2 { font-size: 14pt }
h3 { font-size: 11pt }
h4 { font-size: 9pt }
h5 { font-size: 8pt }
h6 {
font-size: 8pt;
font-weight: normal;
}
}
- Remove
- space above title, remove "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia", URL, categories, modification text and license text
/* Remove non-essential elements */
@media print {
.firstHeading { margin-top: 0; padding-top: 0; }
#siteSub { display: none; }
.printfooter { display: none; }
#catlinks, .catlinks { display: none; }
#footer { display: none; }
}
Linking
It is possible to include links to the printable version of a page. Such links should not be needed in articles, and the use elsewhere should consider the actual need and limitations.
The link to the printable page is of the format:
A link to the printable version of a page can be created by using
{{fullurl:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|printable=yes}}
See also
- Help:Cascading Style Sheets
- User:TheDJ/Print options— a script that gives you greater control of how Wikipedia pages are printed.
Notes
- See also and succession boxes. Second, navigation boxes do contain useful information regarding the relationship of the article to the subjects of related articles.
External links
- "Media types". Cascading Style Sheets Level 2 Revision 1 (CSS 2.1) Specification. World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Retrieved 8 April 2009.