Guide to Editing the Editorial Wiki

The first part of this guide helps to make sure that you're using terms and specialist language consistently. This is important because it helps with search. The second part goes through the practicalities of how to add or edit content - how to create new pages, add links, or style your pages consistently, for example.

Guide for authoring content

Making sure entries are consistent

If you want to edit or write new content, here are some tips:

The wiki contains two types of content. Higher level documents, such as the "Introduction to Revising Legislation" and "Editing Principles", set out concepts and principles. If you're editing or writing this sort of content use the third person. So talk about the role of 'the editor' rather than 'you'. Lower level documents, such as "Preparation Tasks", "Editorial Update", and "Corrective Work" are mostly "how to" guides for editors. If you're editing or writing this sort of content use "you" (for example: 'when you start update you should...').
If you're writing about someone who uses legislation.gov.uk use the term "user" rather than "reader".
Using consistent language is important because it makes it easier to find relevant content when using the wiki search function. This is particularly important if you're using technical terms, or using ordinary English terms in a special sense. To check for consistency, start by looking in the Glossary. If you're using a term in the Glossary, create an anchor to link the term in your text to the term in the Glossary (for how to do this, see the entry in this style guide on how to create anchor links). You can also check how terms have been used on legislation.gov.uk, or in this wiki.
Try not to use editorial jargon; terms that have become established in the editorial team but which might cause confusion. If they are recognised as technical terms in their own right, or as terms we use in a special sense, then it's fine to use them, but here are some things to watch out for:
- Use the term annotation (or annotations) for any item of text in the form of a footnote giving authority for amendments etc. (such as 'F-notes', 'C-notes', 'I-notes', etc.). Don't use the term "commentary".
- Use the term effect (or effects) when referring in general terms to any impact of legislation on other legislation. Only use the term "amendment" (or "amendments") when referring specifically to textual amendments (or, possibly, to the nowadays rare occurrence of a non-textual "amended" effect). Never use the term "non-textual amendment". For the time being, you can use the term "blanket amendment", mainly because it has long been used in the "attributes" information on the website. We may adopt the term "blanket effect" in the future (and if we do, then the Wiki will reflect this change).
Use the term to mark up (and marking up) to describe the activity of the editor in the 'Identify Effects' task. The marks made on the paper (or the electronic equivalent) is markup. The document which has been written on is marked up (it is often described as the marked up copy). Avoid using terms for the markup (such as "annotation") which might be confused with other uses of that term. (Be aware though, that the term "markup language" is used in the XML data underlying the website).
Use the term item of legislation rather than piece of legislation when referring to a whole legislation document such as an Act or SI 'Item of legislation' is the term used on legislation.gov.uk(for example, in status notifications).
Include a hyphen in the term "knock-on".
Use SI, SSI, WSI, SR for general references within the text of the Wiki, for example "Any effect by an EU Exit SI stated to come into force on “IP completion day”" BUT use S.I., S.S.I., W.S.I., S.R. in citations, for example, S.I. 2018/720, art. 2.
Dates should be in the format DD.MM.YYYY within general references in the text of the Wiki, BUT within any tables of TOES entries IF Date 1, 2, 3 ... etc. should be reproduced in the correct TOES format DD/MM/YYYY.
URL not url
Use double rather than single quotation marks around any quotes within text. You can also use <blockquote> tagging or indent a space to create a separate quote that does need to be surrounded by quotation marks, for example:

Reg. 6A renumbered as reg. 6B (25.12.2020 at midnight) by The Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (No. 2) (Amendment No. 24) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2020 (S.R. 2020/356), regs. 1(2), 16

Use "tab" to refer to, for example, the "batch repeal" tab:

Use "button" to refer to, for example, the "Download file" or "Start Task" buttons:

refer to round buttons such as these as radio buttons:

How to edit a wiki page

Once you're logged on, use the overhead navigation bar to find the page you want to edit. Each page has a short menu in the top right-hand corner with the option to "Edit" the content of that page. Alternatively, click the small blue "edit" link, found to the right of each sub-heading on that page. Either option refreshes the page, and produces an 'editing window' that displays the content of the page, along with its html tagging.

You can then either copy and paste the content you wish to include, or type it directly into the editing window. You can't copy and paste text directly from websites, so you'll have to copy web content to a Word document, and then copy and paste from the Word document into the wiki editing window.

At the bottom of the editorial window, you have the option of displaying a preview of the content. This allows you to view changes and make alteration before changes are saved. The "Watch this page" box is automatically ticked - untick it before saving any changes. When you are happy with your edits, click "Save page".

Suggested headings for your new page

When you create a new page, think about including some standard headings and content, outlined below:

"More ____ in Practice" – under this heading include examples of editing principles in action, or upload particularly unusual or obscure examples you've come across that others may find useful.
"Have a Go" – this heading is useful in lower level 'how to' pages. It's where new editors can practise editing during their training, or where existing editors can sharpen their skills.
"Further Reading" – under this heading, provide relevant links to other content or external websites. For example, you might want to include wider, contextual references to the Good Law Initiative, or to the Statutory Instrument Practice manual.

Using the online wiki editor

Creating a new page

When to create a new page

Where possible, add new content into the existing wiki pages. This will prevent a proliferation of pages that could make the wiki harder to use. But there will be times when you need to create a new page. This section tells you what to do.

How to create a new page

To upload content from scratch:

Click on the URL bar of any existing wiki page, highlighting the URL address for that page. A URL address shows the page’s location within the wiki structure. For example, the page entitled ‘Textual Amendments’ is in the ‘Identify Effects’ section. The 'Identify Effects' section comes under the umbrella heading of ‘Preparation Tasks’. The URL address for the 'Textual Amendments' page is therefore:

http://community.legislation.gov.uk/wiki/Preparation_Tasks/Identify_Effects/Textual_Amendments

Once you've highlighted the URL address of any existing page, you can edit it to create the URL address for your new page. The URL you create needs to clearly show where the page will be located in the wiki. Sections are separated with a forward slash (/). Words are separated with an underscore (_). The first word following a forward slash should always be capitalised. Here's an example. If you wanted to create a page called ‘Mark Up Accuracy Assessment’ within the Identify Effects section, this is what the URL would look like:

http://community.legislation.gov.uk/wiki/Preparation_Tasks/Identify_Effects/Mark_Up_Accuracy_Assessment

Once you are satisfied that the URL is correct, hit ‘Return’ on the keyboard to create your new page. The ‘How to edit a wiki page’ shows you how to upload content into your new page. To create a new heading for your page in the left-hand/overhead navigation bar you will need to talk to a senior member of the editorial team - it's not something that can be done automatically.

Headings

You can use three levels of heading in a wiki article (this doesn't include level 1, which is automatically allocated as the page title when you create a new page). This is how you create them:

== some text for a level 2 heading ==
=== some text for a level 3 heading ===
==== some text for a level 4 heading ====

Paragraphs

Emphasising text

Rather than using bold or italic tags, the best practice is to use the strong tag to emphasise text. (This will ensure consistency and allow the wiki to be restyled more easily.)

You can emphasise text as follows:

<strong>some emphasised text</strong>

Changing the colour of text

Including text, quotations and examples

You can use a blockquote to include text, quotations or examples from other sources in a text box.It is created by wrapping the content in <blockquote>...</blockquote> tags:

<blockquote>content of blockquote</blockquote>

The box above was created using blockquote tags.

The code tag can be used to make text look like this: blockquote. For example:

The <code>code</code> tag is typically used to define a piece of computer code, but for the purposes of this wiki, it can be considered to be an inline version of <code>blockquote</code>.

Links

Internal

You can add links to other pages in the wiki as follows:

[[page/subpage|link text to be displayed]]
e.g. [[Preparation Tasks/Identify Effects|Identify Effects]]

Anchors (links to a specific place in a page)

If you want to link to a specific part of another page, or even another part of the same page, you must set up an anchor. You can do this by wrapping a div tag with an identifier (ID) around the part of the page you want to anchor to. The IDs used must be unique to a page. To avoid clashes use the prefix tna- when naming the ID:

<div id="tna-NameOfAnchorHere">optional text</div>

Note: anchors are automatically created for section headings and the top of pages. The IDs for these anchors are created by taking the title of the section heading and replacing any spaces with the underscore _ character. e.g. the ID for the "Using the online wiki editor" section of this page is simply "Using_the_online_wiki_editor".

Once the anchor for a part of a page is known/created, you can link to it as follows:

[[page to be linked to#id of anchor|link text to be displayed]]
e.g. [[Preparation Tasks/Identify Effects/Non-textual Amendments#Types_of_non-textual_amendment|the types of non-textual amendments]]

External

You can insert links to pages on external websites by typing the full url with http:// prefix:

http://full-url-of-website
e.g. http://mediawiki.org

You can insert links with different text to be displayed by typing the url followed by a space and then the link text, all within single square brackets:

[http://url link_text_to_be_displayed]
e.g. [http://mediawiki.org this is a link to MediaWiki]

REMEMBER: when inserting links to provisions in documents on legislation.gov.uk, include the PiT in the URL so that the correct version of the provision is displayed (in case the provision gets amended after the PiT you are interested so that the latest version no longer shows what you want it to). Click on the PiT on the timeline to get the full details of the date included in the URL, e.g.

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2019/588/regulation/9/2020-12-31

Redirect

To redirect a page to another page, use #REDIRECT[[Details of page to redirect to]]. For example:

#REDIRECT [[Preparation_Tasks/Record_Effects#Savings.2C_Transitional_Provisions_and_other_ancillary_provisions]]

Lists

This part of the guide tells you how to create bulleted lists, numbered lists and tables.

Bulleted lists

To insert a bulleted list, simply start each line with an asterisk *:

*first bulleted item in list
*second bulleted item in list
*third bulleted item in list

Numbered lists

Numbered lists are created by starting each line with a hash #. Nested lists are created by starting the line with two hashes:

#this is item 1
#item 2
##item 2.a
##item 2.b
inserting a new line terminates the list
#items created here would form a new list, so this item would be numbered 1 again

List items in wiki markup can generally be no longer than a paragraph. A blank line (or new line without a leading #) will terminate the list. In order to force an item to have more than one paragraph, you should insert two line break tags (<br/><br/>).

Tables

Use the following wiki tags to create a table:

Wiki tag	Purpose
`{\|`	table start (required)
`!`	table header cell (optional)
`\|-`	table row (optional on the first row)
`\|`	table data cell
`\|}`	table end (required)

Sample code to create a 3 column, 4 row (plus 1 header) table is given below:

{|
!Country
!Capital
!Population
|-
|China
|Beijing
|20,693,000
|-
|India
|New Delhi
|17,838,000
|-
|Japan
|Tokyo
|13,189,000
|-
|Russia
|Moscow
|11,541,000
|}

This is what the table looks like when you've created it using the code above:

Country	Capital	Population
China	Beijing	20,693,000
India	New Delhi	17,838,000
Japan	Tokyo	13,189,000
Russia	Moscow	11,541,000

Images

This section tells you how to insert an image into your page.

To save an image from a spreadsheet, select the cells you wish to comprise your image and cut and paste them into Paint, then save them to your computer with an appropriate name as file type .png.

Uploading image files

If you want to insert an image, the image file must have been uploaded to the wiki. You can find a list of uploaded files under Special:ListFiles.

If the file is not already on the server, you can upload it by clicking on Upload file in the user toolbar (underneath the navigation bar).

Inserting images

You can insert images into your page as follows:

[[File:file_name|link=]]
e.g. [[File:Test-upload-20141124.jpg|link=]]

If you want more detailed instructions on how to insert images go to MediaWiki help page for images.

Ignoring wiki markup

Sometimes you need to instruct the wiki to ignore mark up. For example if you want to include an * in your text, you need to tell the wiki not to take the inclusion of an * as an instruction to include a bullet point. You do this by wrapping the element that you want the wiki to ignore in the following code:

<nowiki>ELEMENT TO IGNORE</nowiki>

Including HTML code for character entities

The <nowiki> element doesn't work for HTML code for character entities. If you need to include the HTML code for a character entity e.g. &, use “&” in place of “&” at the start.

To distinguish character entities from the rest of the text, use <code></code> tags around them.

Character	HTML code to enter in edit mode	How it will look on the Wiki page
Ampersand	<code>&amp;</code>	`&`
Hard space	<code>&#160;</code>	` `