Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Disambiguation pages

Apart from the exceptions listed below, piping and redirects should generally not be used on disambiguation pages. This is to make it clear to the reader which topic is the subject of an article title. For example, on the disambiguation page Moment, in the entry Moment (physics), the parenthetical disambiguator "(physics)" should be visible so that the reader sees which "moment" topic the entry is about, among others sharing the same base title. In many cases, what would be hidden by a pipe is exactly what the user would need in order to find their intended article. However, raw section and anchor points should not be displayed; see § Section and anchor point linking for those cases.

Though piping and redirects should generally not be used in disambiguation pages, there are certain cases in which they may be useful to the reader:

Where redirecting may be appropriate

• Redirecting may be appropriate where the primary topic is a redirect; see § Linking to a primary topic.
• Redirecting may be appropriate when linking to
  another disambiguation page
  .
• However, when the disambiguated term is an
  BNL (bank)
  .
• A redirect should be used to link to a specific section of an article if only that section discusses the disambiguated topic. This also suggests that the topic may eventually have its own article. For example:

  Eon may refer to:

  • (correct)
    Eon (geology)
    , a division of the geologic time scale

    [[Eon (geology)]], a division of the geologic time scaleY

  • (incorrect) Eon, a division of the geologic time scale

    [[Geologic time scale#Terminology|Eon]], a division of the geologic time scale N

  • (incorrect) Eon, a division of the geologic time scale

    Eon, a [[Geologic time scale#Divisions of geologic time|division of the geologic time scale]] N

  The above technique is used when the link is the subject of the line. For description sections, redirects or piped links may be used; follow the normal Wikipedia:Redirect and Wikipedia:Piped link guidelines.

• Linking to a redirect can also be helpful when both:
  1. the redirect target article contains the disambiguated term; and
  2. the redirect could serve as an alternative name for the target article, meaning an alternative term that is already in the article's lead section. For example:

  James Cary may refer to:

  • (correct)
    James Carrey
    or Jim Carrey (born 1962), Canadian actor

    [[James Carrey]] or Jim Carrey (born 1962), Canadian actor Y

  • (incorrect) James Carrey or Jim Carrey (born 1962), Canadian actor

    James Carrey or [[Jim Carrey]] (born 1962), Canadian actor N

  The above example of a redirect is only appropriate because James Carrey is indicated as an alternative name in the lead section of the Jim Carrey article. If it were not, then the second example could have been used instead.

Where piping may be appropriate

• Use piping to add italics or quotation marks to part of an article name; for instance,
  "Hush" (Buffy episode), Neo (The Matrix). The templates {{fti}} and {{ftq}} may be used to create properly formatted links. These should be substituted, since templates are discouraged on disambiguation pages (see § Images and templates
  below).
  • Wikipedia:WikiProject Disambiguation/Title templates for song, album and film title links
  • Wikipedia:WikiProject Ships/Tools for ship and ship classes links
• Similarly, use piping if the entry's article title differs from how it should actually be rendered, due to
  Softimage|XSI
  .
• When the link is part of the description, rather than the actual entry name, piping can be used more freely. However, the text of the link should still be very similar to the title of the target article, to avoid confusing the reader. For example:

  Switch may refer to:

  • "Switch", a song by Siouxsie & the Banshees from The Scream

    "Switch", a song by Siouxsie & the Banshees from ''[[The Scream (album)|The Scream]]''

• Piping may be used when the link is in the description (see § Items appearing within other articles) for linking to a section or anchor point rather than an entire article. For example, on E (disambiguation), the piped Entertainment Software Rating Board ([[Entertainment Software Rating Board#Ratings|Entertainment Software Rating Board]]) is preferable to simply linking to the entire article Entertainment Software Rating Board. Piping is commonly used to link to the track listing section of an album article. The text of the link should not be the title of a different article, and should not surprise the reader. For example:

  Ten may refer to:

  • (correct) Ten or Tenshinhan, a character in Dragon Ball media

    Ten or Tenshinhan, a [[List of Dragon Ball characters#Ten Shinhan|character in Dragon Ball media]] Y

  • (incorrect) Ten or Tenshinhan, a character in Dragon Ball media

    Ten or Tenshinhan, a character in [[List of Dragon Ball characters#Tien Shinhan|Dragon Ball]] media N

  This is incorrect because although the piped link will take the reader to the correct page where the character's name is discussed, the actual article Dragon Ball does not mention him and is not where the reader should think he or she is heading.

Section and anchor point linking

Section and anchor points in links should not be visible to the reader (e.g., [[Galactic quadrant (Star Trek)#Delta Quadrant]]). If an anchor-point link is needed:

• For linking the subject, link to a redirect to the anchor point (or leave the subject unlinked and move the link to the description).
• For links in the description, link to a redirect or use an anchor-point link with piping to display text similar to the article title.

When creating a redirect to a section, add the template {{R to section}} on the redirect page within the {{Redirect category shell}}. When a redirect to an anchor is created, make sure the {{anchor}} template is placed at the targeted topic in the article, and tag the redirect with {{R to anchor}}.

Specific entry types

External links

External links should not be used on disambiguation pages.

Foreign languages

For foreign-language terms, be sure an article exists or could be written for the word or phrase in question. Usually this means that the term has been at least partially adopted into English or is used by specialists.

Avoid adding foreign words or phrases that are merely translations of an English term. For example, do not include:

Instead, consider linking to Wiktionary.

People

For people, include their birth and death years (when known), and only enough descriptive information that the reader can distinguish between different people with the same name. Keep in mind the conventions for birth and death dates—see Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers § Dates of birth and death. Do not include a, an or the before the description of the person's occupation or role.

Title-and-name disambiguation pages

It is common practice for sources to refer to holders of certain offices or stations by their title and surname. These references frequently make their way into articles, complete with links. Having disambiguation pages at these titles makes it easier for readers to find particular individuals who might be known by this combination, while also helping to eliminate incorrect links. These pages provide better results than Wikipedia's search function, which will sometimes return every article containing the title and the surname, even where the words have no relation to one another in the article. Jumbled results from the search function bury those most relevant to a search for people who might actually be called by that title and name. This is exacerbated by Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Biography#Titles of people, which generally prohibits referring to article subjects by their title in running text. These pages also provide a better result than merely redirecting the combination to a surname page, as the surname page will likely include many names of persons not associated with the title.

A title-and-name disambiguation page should only be created if there are multiple individuals who can be included on the page. Furthermore, an individual should only be included on a page if the subject was notably known by that title and name, and this is reflected in reliable sources. For example, there is no redirect from

Having a title in some capacity is also not, by itself, sufficient to merit inclusion on the page. There must be a reasonable propensity for the subject to be referred to by the title and name in combination. Thus, people who are merely a sports team captain should not be listed with people titled "Captain", and people who are merely the president of a company should not be listed with people titled "President". In some cases, people have given names that in other contexts are a title (such as actor Justice Smith, politician Major Owens, and musician Earl Hines). Where this is the case, the person with such a name will often be considered the primary topic over any person with a corresponding title and name.

Places

For places, it may only be necessary to write the name of the article.

It may be appropriate to add the country after the link. Leave the country unlinked.

Red links

A link to a non-existent article (a "red link") should be included on a disambiguation page only when a linked article (not just other disambiguation pages) also includes that red link. Do not create red links to articles that are unlikely ever to be written, or are likely to be removed as insufficiently notable topics. To find out if any article uses the red link, follow the link, and then use the "What links here" link in the toolbox.

If the only pages that use the red link are disambiguation pages, do one of the following:

• Unlink the entry word but still keep a blue link in the description. Red links should not be the only link in a given entry; link also to an existing article, so that a reader (as opposed to a contributing editor) will have somewhere to navigate to for additional information. The linked article should contain some meaningful information about the term.
• Start a new article for the red link, using the description on the disambiguation page.
• Make a redirect to a page where the item is described (see § Piping and redirects above).

In the following (made-up) examples, if the entry with the architectural motif is judged to be appropriate for a future article, and assuming that the fictitious "flibbygibby" is mentioned in its respectively linked article, it is considered a valid entry. If "flibbygibby" is not mentioned in the noodle article, or there is no linked article at all, as in the toy example, it is not a valid entry; therefore, only the entry for the architectural motif can include a red link.

Synonyms

If the link is to a synonym (where the disambiguated title is mentioned as a synonym), simply use it as it is named:

Items appearing within other articles

If a topic does not have an article of its own, but is discussed within another article, then a link to that article may be included if it would provide value to the reader. In this case, the link may not start the line (unless it has a redirect that is devoted to it), but it should still be the only blue wikilink. For example:

It is often useful to link to the relevant section of the target page using

Many pages serve primarily to disambiguate short letter combinations that can represent various acronyms and initialisms. When considering articles to include in the list, it is important that each individual entry is referred to by its respective abbreviation within its article. For example:

The second entry is incorrect because the article that it refers to,

Ordering

The following guidelines describe the appropriate order of entries on disambiguation pages:

1. The primary topic, if there is one, should be placed at the top.
2. In cases where a small number of main topics are significantly more likely to be the reader's target, several of the most common meanings may be placed at the top, with other meanings below. See Mojave or Mercury for examples of this.
3. Long disambiguation pages should be grouped into subject sections, and even subsections as necessary, as described below. These sections (and any subsections) should typically be in alphabetical order.
4. Within each section, entries should be ordered to best assist the reader in finding their intended article. This might mean in decreasing order of likelihood as the user's target, alphabetically, chronologically, or geographically, not to the exclusion of other methods. In some cases it is useful to order entries by similarity to the ambiguous title, as follows:
   1. Articles with a clarifier in parentheses: e.g., Moss (band)
   2. Articles with a clarifier following a comma: e.g.,
      Moss, Monterey County, California
   3. Articles with the item as part of the name: e.g.,
      Moss Bros
      (Only include articles whose subject might reasonably be called by the ambiguous title.)
   4. Synonyms: e.g., Tupolev Tu-126 (NATO reporting name: Moss)

See also section

Some entries may belong in a

• Links to indexes of article titles beginning with Title (using {{look from|Title}}), article titles containing Title (using {{in title|Title}}), or both (using {{self-reference tool}}^[a])
• Terms which can be confused with Title, for example New Market and Newmarket
• Less likely to be confused alternative spellings of Title, for example Belmont, Belmonte and Bellmont
• Different forms of Title, for example Splitting, Split, and Splitter
• Certain
  partial title matches
  .

As with any See also section, the ordering should be logical.

The See also should always be separated from the other entries with a

In the See also section of a disambiguation page, an intentional link to another disambiguation page that does not contain "(disambiguation)" in the title should be written as [[Foo (disambiguation)]] (then ensure that a redirect to [[Foo]] exists at that location).

When appropriate, place easily confused terms or commonly confused alternate spellings in a hatnote instead of a See also section. For example, Sydney (disambiguation) has a hatnote linking to Sidney (disambiguation).

Example ordering

Grouping by subject area

A large number of entries can make it difficult for a reader to find a particular topic. On longer disambiguation pages, separate entries by subject

Entries that do not fit neatly into any section should be placed in an "Other uses" section or subsection, at the bottom of the page or section (but above any

Keep in mind that a particular division scheme may not work equally well on all disambiguation pages. An example:

Use sections rather than bold text (see

If neither of the two meanings is primary, then a normal disambiguation page is still used at the base name.

Application of these guidelines will generally produce useful disambiguation pages that are consistent with each other and therefore easily usable by most readers. Usefulness to the readers is their principal goal. However, for every style recommendation above, there may be pages in which a good reason exists to use another way; so ignore these guidelines if doing so will be more helpful to readers than following them.

• Wikipedia:Broad-concept article
• Wikipedia:Disambiguation dos and don'ts (information page summarizing key points of this guideline)
• Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links
• Wikipedia:Database reports § Disambiguations
• Wikipedia:Red links § Disambiguation pages
• Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and navigation templates
• Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Organizing disambiguation pages by subject area
• Help:Wikipedia: The Missing Manual/Building a stronger encyclopedia/Getting readers to the right article: Naming, redirects, and disambiguation

WikiProjects

• Wikipedia:WikiProject Disambiguation
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Disambiguations

Relevant categories

Also see the

• Category:Disambiguation and redirection templates
• Category:Disambiguation pages in need of cleanup

Essays

• Wikipedia:Partially disambiguated page names
• Wikipedia:Primary topics in WP:TWODABS situations