Text Formatting Rules

Depending on the extensions installed, you can have different text formatting rules in effect:

• Creole Markup Extension – install this extension if you’re not sure what to do; it’s the wiki markup standard and provides markup **like this**
• Usemod Markup Extension – this extension provides the traditional markup that was used by Usemod and Mediawiki in the early days '''like this'''
• bbCode Extension – provides support for typical forum markup [b]like this[/b]
• Markup Extension – a very simple non-standard markup extension that provides shortcuts *like this*

In all these cases, the default rules remain in effect. The rest of this page describes the default rules.

• Paragraphs to get you started
• Local Links like the ones in these list above (see Link Pattern for more in-depth information)
• Inline Images like
• URLs like example.org/
• Bullet List like this list you’re looking at
• Numerical Escapes for the advanced HTML geeks
• Transclusion Rules for the advanced wiki geeks

There are many other more rarely used formatting features, such as Permanent Anchors, Including RSS Feeds, Including Searches, Transclusion

You can also create your own rules. See New Text Formatting Rules.

Paragraphs

The most important rules are very simple:

1. Empty lines separate paragraphs.
2. Paragraphs may span several lines.

With these simple rules, you can already start writing text.

Local Links

Local pages are linked using various link patterns.

See Link Pattern for how to enable and disable some of the features, if you have access to the config file.

Words in double square brackets are links to local pages. These square brackets will not be rendered if the page exists, since this links to a local page. Note that usual punctuation characters are not allowed in free links.

[[Text Formatting Rules]]

Result:

Text Formatting Rules

CamelCase words are the traditional links to local pages.

Example:

CamelCase

Result:

(disabled on this wiki, option $WikiLinks set to 0)

To prevent the word from being linked, prefix it with an exclamation-mark (!).

Example:

!CamelCase

Result:

(no effect on this wiki, since $WikiLinks is set to 0)

This only works reliably when the first upper-case character is an ASCII character (A-Z) and there is another upper-case ASCII character in the word, because Oddmuse doesn’t rely on installed locales.

Examples that will not work:

ÖlFörderung
SchwerÖl

Inline Images

Words in double square brackets will inline images on local pages if prefixed with “image:”. These square brackets will not be rendered if the page exists, since this links to a local page. See File Upload for more information on uploading images to pages.

Example:

[[image:Zürich By Night]]

Result:

URLs

Plain URLs get hyperlinked.

Example:

www.emacswiki.org/

Result:

www.emacswiki.org/

Plain URLs ending in an image suffix will inline the image.

Example:

www.emacswiki.org/emacs_logo.png

Result:

Plain URLs in square brackets turn into numbered links, looking like footnotes.

Example:

[www.emacswiki.org/]

Result:

[1]

Plain URLs plus some text in square brackets result in the text being linked to the URL. The square brackets will remain visible in order to distinguish these links from links to local pages if you do not provide your own Cascading Style Sheet.

Example:

[www.emacswiki.org/ Emacs Wiki]

Result:

Emacs Wiki

Bullet List

List items start with one or more asterisks (*) and a space. The number of asterisks indicates the indentation level. An empty line ends the list.

Example:

* One item
* Another item
** One More

Result:

• One item
• Another item
  • One More

Numerical Escapes

The Usemod Markup Extension contains a rule for definition lists. It looks as follows:

; term: definition

If you want the term to include a colon, you have to use numerical escapes. The colon has the ASCII code 58, therefore you can write the following:

; foo:bar: example

Result:

foo:bar

example

The following escapes are possible:

1. Numerical escapes using decimal numbers, eg. : for a colon
2. Numerical escapes using hexadecimal numbers, eg. : for a colon
3. The named entities amp, lt, and gt are also allowed, eg. & for a &

Transclusion Rules

<include ...>

Includes other named pages. See Transclusion.

<journal ...>

Includes other pages whose title follows a particular pattern. See Journal Pages.

<rss ...>

Include RSS feeds. See Including RSS Feeds.

<search ...>

Include search results. See Searching.

Miscellaneous

<<<<<<<

This indicates the beginning of a conflict. You should never have to use this rule yourself. It only exists so that conflicts are easy to see on a page. See Edit Conflicts.

The text formatting rules for links are listed on a separate page. See Link Pattern.