Wikipedia:Indentation
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Good indentation makes prolonged discussions easier to read and understand. It might be helpful to think of discussions as reports with numbered/bulleted sections and subsections where material is not necessarily written in chronological order.
Although this example page about how to indent is an essay, the use of normal indentation
This essay only applies to talk pages. Because of differing
Indentation examples
In these examples the boldface line is the most recently added comment.
1. Your reply to a particular comment should be indented beneath that comment. Indents are achieved by typing one or more leading colon :
characters at the very left margin, just before the text you add. In the following example, a single colon was typed just before the "Me too" text of the second comment:
Markup Renders as I think good indentation is very helpful. --~~~~ :'''Me too.''' --~~~~
2. If you want to reply to a comment, but another editor has already done so, just position your own text beneath that other editor's reply, at the same indentation level:
Markup Renders as I think good indentation is very helpful. --~~~~ :Me too. --~~~~ :'''Me three!''' --~~~~
Note that there is no blank line between comments, and if you reply using multiple paragraphs, use the colons before the blank line between paragraphs (see
3. Your response to a reply should be positioned below that reply, but above any later responses that were made to a different comment. In the following, Alice has done so, using two leading colon characters to indicate that she's responding to the reply made by Bob:
Markup Renders as I think good indentation is very helpful. --~~~~ :Me too. --~~~~ ::'''I thought you didn't like indentation, Bob.''' --~~~~ :Me three! --~~~~
Again, there is no blank line between comments.
4. If you want to introduce a new topic that is still closely related to the one already under discussion, you should add it at the very bottom of the section, below all the previous comments on the original topic, without indenting it at all:
Markup Renders as I think good indentation is very helpful. --~~~~ :Me too. --~~~~ ::I thought you didn't like indentation, Bob. --~~~~ :Me three! --~~~~ ::I thought you didn't like indentation either, Carlos. --~~~~ :::I thought that too, Alice. --~~~~ '''Good spelling and grammar are important on talk pages.''' --~~~~
5. When you want to introduce a new topic that isn't closely related to the one already under discussion in a talk-page section, then it's usually best to create an entirely new section or subsection on the talk page for that purpose. You can find out how to do that by reading about "Headings and subheadings" on
Outdenting
Sometimes, a long discussion can cause indentation to become too deep, which can make it difficult to read in narrower browser windows. When it does, you should consider outdenting your next comment. When you do that, it's helpful to make clear what you're doing: The templates {{
In the examples below, the user adding the final comment has typed the characters of the template, including its "braces", at the left margin, below the preceding comment, and just ahead of the text they entered for their own comment:
Example of {{outdent}}
Markup Renders as I think good indentation is very helpful. --~~~~ :Me too. --~~~~ ::I thought you didn't like indentation, Bob. --~~~~ :::Well I sure don't. --~~~~ ::::I can take it or leave it. --~~~~ {{od|::::}}'''I like it, but not too much.''' --~~~~
Example of {{outdent2}}
Markup Renders as I think good indentation is very helpful. --~~~~ :Me too. --~~~~ ::I thought you didn't like indentation, Bob. --~~~~ :::Well I sure don't. --~~~~ ::::I can take it or leave it. -—~~~~ {{od2}}'''I like it, but not too much.''' --~~~~
What kind of markup is this, anyway?
This is
The appropriated markup is intended for lists. Perhaps the most common departure from proper list markup is the use of :
. In definition lists, a ;
at the beginning of the line indicates a term which is to be defined, and :
at the beginning of the next line indicates the definition of the term. But in talk pages ;
is seldom used.
See also
- Help:Introduction to talk pages/Old layout page
- Help:Using talk pages#Indentation, a proposal from 2006 for each party in a discussion to use a different indentation level
- Wikipedia:Etiquette
- Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Accessibility#Lists
- Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines
- Wikipedia:Tutorial/Talk pages#Indenting
- Talk page guidelines archive for the effect of various wikicode indentation styles on the HTML output.