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This guideline is a part of the English Wikipedia's Manual of Style.
It is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though it is best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply. Any substantive edit to this page should reflect consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page. |
 | This page in a nutshell: Hidden text, that is visible only when editing, can be inserted into articles, project pages, and other Wikipedia pages, by surrounding the text as follows:
<!-- Hidden text --> |
On Wikipedia, hidden text is text that is visible when editing the source for the page or when using VisualEditor, but not on the "rendered" version of the page presented to readers of the article.
Invisible comments are useful for alerting other editors to issues such as common mistakes that regularly occur in the article, a section title's being the target of an incoming link, or pointing to a discussion that established a consensus relating to the article. They should not be used to instruct other editors not to perform certain edits, although where existing local consensus is against making such an edit, they may usefully draw the editor's attention to that. Avoid adding too many invisible comments because they can clutter the wiki source for other editors.
<!-- If you change this section title, also change the links to it on the pages .... --> (bots do this, see MOS:RENAMESECTION)<!-- When adding table entries, remember to update the total given in the text. --><!-- Please only add items to this section if they are mentioned in, and cited to, reliable sources. -->Some situations where hidden text is useful and good to have in articles:
<!--BEGIN CFD TEMPLATE--> on categories being discussed at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion<!-- This article is perfect. Don't mess with it! --><!-- To the bozos who keep editing this section to use em-dashes: eat my shorts. --><!-- BTW this album slaps hard, check it out if you get a chance --><!-- Jimmy was here. -->Types of hidden text that should not be added include:
Enter <!-- Comment --> and replace the word "Comment" with the hidden text you desire.
Example (and note that line breaks in the comment itself do not show up in the rendered page):
The clock tower was constructed in 1928,<ref name="historicalsociety"/> and while it was struck by lightning in November 1955,<ref name="picayune"/><!--
The Picayune-Herald article lists it as being constructed in 1929, but the Historical Society's book (and the original city documents) show it was built in 1928.
--> it remained functional until 1987,
<!--Some sources erroneously cite this as having taken place in 1989.-->
when its face was permanently damaged in a fight between a high school student and an immortal vampire.<ref name="araki"/>
This will render as:
The clock tower was constructed in 1928,[1] and while it was struck by lightning in November 1955,[2] it remained functional until 1987, when its face was permanently damaged in a fight between a high school student and an immortal vampire.[3]
Check that your invisible comment does not upset the article's formatting, for example by introducing unwanted white space.
