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[[Category:Help]]{{Editor toc}}
The '''canonical form''' of a page name is shown in large font as page header. Another type of canonical form is what is in URLs generated by the system, for this page "Help:Page_name" with an underscore. Alternative names for this page (on most projects) are [[help:page name]], [[help:Page name]], [[Help:page name]] and [[Help:Page name]], but not '''Help:Page Name'''; the bolded ones are, on this project. For details, see below.
==Restrictions==
===Special characters===
The following characters (the configuration is made in "''$wgLegalTitleChars''") are not allowed in page titles:
# < > [ ] | { }
The non-printable characters with values 0 through 31, and the "delete" character 127, are also not allowed.
The reasons for disallowing these characters include:
:* '''[''', ''']''', '''{''', '''}''', and '''|''' have special meaning within Wikipedia's syntax, which are processed ''before'' the pagename is determined. For example, <nowiki>[[{{CURRENTYEAR}}]]</nowiki> points at [[{{CURRENTYEAR}}]], not a page called ''<nowiki>{{CURRENTYEAR}}</nowiki>''.
===Forward slash (/)===
Depending on the namespace and the settings, a forward slash in the pagename provides special functionality, see [[Help:Link#Subpage feature|subpage feature]].
===Namespace prefixes===
Also, the first part of a page name may not coincide with [[Help:Namespace#Automatic_conversions_of_page_names|a project-independent namespace prefix that is automatically converted to another one]]. As an example, the name '''Project: A-Kon''' is not possible.
The first part of a page name can coincide with a namespace prefix that is not converted. For example, there might be articles in the English Wikipedia about books called '''''Wikipedia: The Big Adventure''''' and '''''Talk: Secrets are Bad''''' (but only without the space after the colon). However, in that case the pages are in the wrong namespace. This may be inconvenient in searching or displaying a list of pages. Also, in the second case there is no link to a Talk page about the book.
===Prefixes referring to other projects or pseudo-namespaces===
A page name cannot start with a prefix that is in use to refer to another project, including language codes, e.g. "en:" ([http://wikimedia.org/langlist list]), or one of the pseudo-namespaces "Media:" and "Special:".
Thus e.g. an article about the album "Q: What is health? A: Happiness!" can not have that exact name. An attempt to create the article, whether by a link [[Q: What is health? A: Happiness!]] or a URL http://www.wiki.hmccentral.com/Q:What_is_health%3F_A:_Happiness%21 leads to Wikiquote.
===Maximum page name length===
The maximum page name length is 255 bytes (excluding the namespace prefix). Be aware that non-ASCII characters may take up to four bytes in UTF-8 encoding, so the total number of ''characters'' you can fit into a title may be less than 255 depending on the language it's in.
==Spaces vs. underscores==
In '''page names''', a blank space is equivalent with an underscore. A blank space is displayed in the large font title at the top of the page, the URLs show an underscore. See also below.
==Case-sensitivity==
If for the first letter of a page name two cases exist, as in the case of letters of the Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, and Armenian alphabets, the following applies.
All characters of namespace prefixes are case-insensitive. The canonical form, shown in large font as page header, and in URLs generated by the system, is on most projects with one capital.
===Case-sensitivity of the first character===
The first character of the page name (outside the main namespace: after the namespace prefix) may or may not be case-sensitive, depending on the project. <nowiki>[[Help:page name]]</nowiki> gives on this project: [[Help:page name]]. If the first character of the page name is case-sensitive this is a link (to a different page), otherwise it is bold (a self link to this page).
Currently the first character of the page name is case-''in''sensitive, except in the following Wiktionaries:
{|align=center
|
* bg
* cs
* de
* en
* eo
* es
|
* fa
* fi
* fr
* gu
* hi
* hr
|
* hu
* ka
* kn
* ku
* is
* it
|
* ja
* ml
* nl
* pl
* sa
* sv
|
* sw
* tr
* vi
* zh
|}
====Case where the first character is case-insensitive====
The canonical form is with a capital.
Note that in the case of a prefix that is not a namespace for the software, and in the case of a second prefix, the case-insensitivity does not apply to the first character after this prefix, e.g. '''Template:H:Interwiki linking''' and '''Template:H:interwiki linking''' are distinguished.
===Case-sensitivity of the file name extension of an image===
Note that even the file name extension of an image is case-sensitive: compare [[:image:Stop_sign_us.jpg]] and [[:image:Stop_sign_us.JPG]]
==Ignored spaces/underscores==
Spaces/underscores which are ignored:
*those at the start and end of a full page name
*those at the end of a namespace prefix, before the colon
*those after the colon of the namespace prefix
*duplicate consecutive spaces
Some show up in the link label, e.g. <nowiki>[[___help__ :_ _template_ _]]</nowiki> becomes [[___help__ :_ _template_ _]], linking to [[Help:Template]].
However, a space before or after a "normal" colon makes a difference, e.g. [[MediaWiki User's Guide: Editing overview]] and [[MediaWiki User's Guide : Editing overview]], and [[MediaWiki User's Guide:Editing overview]] are all distinguished, because "MediaWiki User's Guide:" is a pseudo-namespace, not a real one.
==Coding of characters==
A page name can not contain e.g. %41, because that is automatically converted to the character A, for which %41 is the code. <nowiki>[[%41]]</nowiki> is rendered as [[%41]]. Similarly <nowiki>%C3%80</nowiki> is automatically converted to the character À. <nowiki>[[%C3%80]]</nowiki> is rendered as [[%C3%80]]. The URL of the page is http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%80. One can argue what is the real name of the page, %C3%80 or À (a user will say the latter), but anyway there can not be distinct pages with these names.
==Canonical form==
The inclusion tag for a non-existing page shows a link with the canonical form of the page name: <nowiki>{{qwsazx}}, {{:qwsazx}}, {{project:qws azx}}</nowiki> give {{qwsazx}}, {{:qwsazx}}, {{project:qws azx}}; compare with ordinary links [[Template:qwsazx]], [[qwsazx]], [[project:qws azx]]; these work like [[Help:Piped link|Piped link]]s, e.g. <nowiki>[[Qwsazx|qwsazx]]</nowiki>; in this case the conversion shows up on the referring page only when pointing at it: in the pop-up and in the status bar (if applicable for the browser); whether the target is a redirect, and what the final target is, is not shown at all.
A saved redirect page shows the canonical form of the target, even though the preview renders the link in the usual way, compare [http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Babel&redirect=no] with the preview of [http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Babel&action=edit].
==Alphabetical order==
The system applies alphabetical order only in page names, namely in the following features:
*[[Special:Allpages]]
*[[Help:Categories|categories]]
They are in Unicode order: the range 32-127 corresponds to ASCII.
Thus we have the following partial list showing the order:
!"#$%&'()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>?@
<br>ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\]^_'
<br>abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz{|}~
<br>¡¢£¤¥¦§¨©ª«®¯°±²³´µ•¸¹º»¼½¾¿
<br>ÀÁÂÃÄÅÆÇÈÉÊËÌÍÎÏÐÑÒÓÔÕÖ×ØÙÚÛÜÝÞßàáâãäåæçèéêëìíîïðñòóôõö÷øùúûüýþÿ
<br>ĀāĂ㥹ĆćĈĉĊċČčĎďĐđĒēĔĕĖėĘęĚěĜĝĞğĠġĢģĤĥĦħĨĩĪīĬĭĮįİıIJijĴĵĶķĸĹĺĻļĽľĿŀŁłŃńŅņŇňʼnŊŋ
<br>ŌōŎŏŐőŒœŔŕŖŗŘřŚśŜŝŞşŠšŢţŤťŦŧŨũŪūŬŭŮůŰűŲųŴŵŶŷŸŹźŻżŽžſ
<br>ǺǻǼǽǾǿ΄΅Ά·ΈΉΊΌΎΏΐ
<br>ΑΒΓΔΕΖΗΘΙΚΛΜΝΞΟΠΡΣΤΥΦΧΨΩΪΫάέήίΰ
<br>αβγδεζηθικλμνξοπρςστυφχψωϊϋόύώ
Note in particular that "Z" comes before "a", and "z" before "é". The blank space within a page name is treated as an underscore, and therefore comes after the capitals, and before the lower case letters. However, a "blank space" after the name comes before any character. Sometimes a special character looks like a regular letter, but has a special code anyway.
Thus we have the order PC, PCX, PC Bruno, PCjr, Κύρια Σελίδα.
==Conversion of spaces to underscores and of special characters to escape codes==
There is no feature for just conversion of spaces to underscores and of special characters to escape codes, but there are two features for doing this in combination with something else: localurl (see [[Help:Variable]]) and PAGENAMEE.
Most needs for conversion are covered by these, but e.g. in a template one cannot link to a page with a given name {{{1}}} on a project with a different [[mw:Help:$wgScript|$wgScript]].
=== Variables PAGENAME and PAGENAMEE ===
The [[Help:Variable|variable]] <nowiki>{{PAGENAME}}</nowiki> gives, for this page, '''{{PAGENAME}}'''. <nowiki>{{PAGENAMEE}}</nowiki> gives '''{{PAGENAMEE}}'''.
Thus in the first case a space is used, in the second case an underscore, like in URLs. Similarly, À becomes the escape code %C3%80 (see above), and so on.
<nowiki>{{NAMESPACE}}:{{PAGENAME}}</nowiki> and <nowiki>{{NAMESPACE}}:{{PAGENAMEE}}</nowiki> give for this page {{NAMESPACE}}:{{PAGENAME}} and {{NAMESPACE}}:{{PAGENAMEE}}, respectively. For a page in the main namespace, the page name is prefixed with a colon.
Example:
<nowiki>http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Whatlinkshere&target={{NAMESPACE}}:{{PAGENAMEE}}</nowiki>
gives
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Whatlinkshere&target={{NAMESPACE}}:{{PAGENAMEE}}
Within localurl, <nowiki>{{PAGENAME}}</nowiki> should be used in the first part (because it is converted by localurl), or <nowiki>{{PAGENAMEE}}</nowiki> in the second part:
*<nowiki>{{SERVER}}{{localurl:Special:Allpages|namespace=12&from={{PAGENAMEE}}}}</nowiki> gives here:
{{SERVER}}{{localurl:Special:Allpages|namespace=12&from={{PAGENAMEE}}}}
*<nowiki>{{SERVER}}{{localurl:Special:Allpages/{{PAGENAME}}|namespace=12}}</nowiki> gives here:
{{SERVER}}{{localurl:Special:Allpages/{{PAGENAME}}|namespace=12}}
Wrong:
*<nowiki>{{SERVER}}{{localurl:Special:Allpages|namespace=12&from={{PAGENAME}}}}</nowiki> gives here:
{{SERVER}}{{localurl:Special:Allpages|namespace=12&from={{PAGENAME}}}} (wrong link)
*<nowiki>{{SERVER}}{{localurl:Special:Allpages/{{PAGENAMEE}}|namespace=12}}</nowiki> gives here:
{{SERVER}}{{localurl:Special:Allpages/{{PAGENAMEE}}|namespace=12}} (works here, the underscore, converted from a space, is not affected by the second conversion, but it does not work with special characters).
==See also==
*[[Help:Link]] gives examples of conversions in the page name from wikitext to HTML, and from HTML to actual target page.
{{h:f|langs=|enname={{PAGENAME}}}}
The '''canonical form''' of a page name is shown in large font as page header. Another type of canonical form is what is in URLs generated by the system, for this page "Help:Page_name" with an underscore. Alternative names for this page (on most projects) are [[help:page name]], [[help:Page name]], [[Help:page name]] and [[Help:Page name]], but not '''Help:Page Name'''; the bolded ones are, on this project. For details, see below.
==Restrictions==
===Special characters===
The following characters (the configuration is made in "''$wgLegalTitleChars''") are not allowed in page titles:
# < > [ ] | { }
The non-printable characters with values 0 through 31, and the "delete" character 127, are also not allowed.
The reasons for disallowing these characters include:
:* '''[''', ''']''', '''{''', '''}''', and '''|''' have special meaning within Wikipedia's syntax, which are processed ''before'' the pagename is determined. For example, <nowiki>[[{{CURRENTYEAR}}]]</nowiki> points at [[{{CURRENTYEAR}}]], not a page called ''<nowiki>{{CURRENTYEAR}}</nowiki>''.
===Forward slash (/)===
Depending on the namespace and the settings, a forward slash in the pagename provides special functionality, see [[Help:Link#Subpage feature|subpage feature]].
===Namespace prefixes===
Also, the first part of a page name may not coincide with [[Help:Namespace#Automatic_conversions_of_page_names|a project-independent namespace prefix that is automatically converted to another one]]. As an example, the name '''Project: A-Kon''' is not possible.
The first part of a page name can coincide with a namespace prefix that is not converted. For example, there might be articles in the English Wikipedia about books called '''''Wikipedia: The Big Adventure''''' and '''''Talk: Secrets are Bad''''' (but only without the space after the colon). However, in that case the pages are in the wrong namespace. This may be inconvenient in searching or displaying a list of pages. Also, in the second case there is no link to a Talk page about the book.
===Prefixes referring to other projects or pseudo-namespaces===
A page name cannot start with a prefix that is in use to refer to another project, including language codes, e.g. "en:" ([http://wikimedia.org/langlist list]), or one of the pseudo-namespaces "Media:" and "Special:".
Thus e.g. an article about the album "Q: What is health? A: Happiness!" can not have that exact name. An attempt to create the article, whether by a link [[Q: What is health? A: Happiness!]] or a URL http://www.wiki.hmccentral.com/Q:What_is_health%3F_A:_Happiness%21 leads to Wikiquote.
===Maximum page name length===
The maximum page name length is 255 bytes (excluding the namespace prefix). Be aware that non-ASCII characters may take up to four bytes in UTF-8 encoding, so the total number of ''characters'' you can fit into a title may be less than 255 depending on the language it's in.
==Spaces vs. underscores==
In '''page names''', a blank space is equivalent with an underscore. A blank space is displayed in the large font title at the top of the page, the URLs show an underscore. See also below.
==Case-sensitivity==
If for the first letter of a page name two cases exist, as in the case of letters of the Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, and Armenian alphabets, the following applies.
All characters of namespace prefixes are case-insensitive. The canonical form, shown in large font as page header, and in URLs generated by the system, is on most projects with one capital.
===Case-sensitivity of the first character===
The first character of the page name (outside the main namespace: after the namespace prefix) may or may not be case-sensitive, depending on the project. <nowiki>[[Help:page name]]</nowiki> gives on this project: [[Help:page name]]. If the first character of the page name is case-sensitive this is a link (to a different page), otherwise it is bold (a self link to this page).
Currently the first character of the page name is case-''in''sensitive, except in the following Wiktionaries:
{|align=center
|
* bg
* cs
* de
* en
* eo
* es
|
* fa
* fi
* fr
* gu
* hi
* hr
|
* hu
* ka
* kn
* ku
* is
* it
|
* ja
* ml
* nl
* pl
* sa
* sv
|
* sw
* tr
* vi
* zh
|}
====Case where the first character is case-insensitive====
The canonical form is with a capital.
Note that in the case of a prefix that is not a namespace for the software, and in the case of a second prefix, the case-insensitivity does not apply to the first character after this prefix, e.g. '''Template:H:Interwiki linking''' and '''Template:H:interwiki linking''' are distinguished.
===Case-sensitivity of the file name extension of an image===
Note that even the file name extension of an image is case-sensitive: compare [[:image:Stop_sign_us.jpg]] and [[:image:Stop_sign_us.JPG]]
==Ignored spaces/underscores==
Spaces/underscores which are ignored:
*those at the start and end of a full page name
*those at the end of a namespace prefix, before the colon
*those after the colon of the namespace prefix
*duplicate consecutive spaces
Some show up in the link label, e.g. <nowiki>[[___help__ :_ _template_ _]]</nowiki> becomes [[___help__ :_ _template_ _]], linking to [[Help:Template]].
However, a space before or after a "normal" colon makes a difference, e.g. [[MediaWiki User's Guide: Editing overview]] and [[MediaWiki User's Guide : Editing overview]], and [[MediaWiki User's Guide:Editing overview]] are all distinguished, because "MediaWiki User's Guide:" is a pseudo-namespace, not a real one.
==Coding of characters==
A page name can not contain e.g. %41, because that is automatically converted to the character A, for which %41 is the code. <nowiki>[[%41]]</nowiki> is rendered as [[%41]]. Similarly <nowiki>%C3%80</nowiki> is automatically converted to the character À. <nowiki>[[%C3%80]]</nowiki> is rendered as [[%C3%80]]. The URL of the page is http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%80. One can argue what is the real name of the page, %C3%80 or À (a user will say the latter), but anyway there can not be distinct pages with these names.
==Canonical form==
The inclusion tag for a non-existing page shows a link with the canonical form of the page name: <nowiki>{{qwsazx}}, {{:qwsazx}}, {{project:qws azx}}</nowiki> give {{qwsazx}}, {{:qwsazx}}, {{project:qws azx}}; compare with ordinary links [[Template:qwsazx]], [[qwsazx]], [[project:qws azx]]; these work like [[Help:Piped link|Piped link]]s, e.g. <nowiki>[[Qwsazx|qwsazx]]</nowiki>; in this case the conversion shows up on the referring page only when pointing at it: in the pop-up and in the status bar (if applicable for the browser); whether the target is a redirect, and what the final target is, is not shown at all.
A saved redirect page shows the canonical form of the target, even though the preview renders the link in the usual way, compare [http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Babel&redirect=no] with the preview of [http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Babel&action=edit].
==Alphabetical order==
The system applies alphabetical order only in page names, namely in the following features:
*[[Special:Allpages]]
*[[Help:Categories|categories]]
They are in Unicode order: the range 32-127 corresponds to ASCII.
Thus we have the following partial list showing the order:
!"#$%&'()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>?@
<br>ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\]^_'
<br>abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz{|}~
<br>¡¢£¤¥¦§¨©ª«®¯°±²³´µ•¸¹º»¼½¾¿
<br>ÀÁÂÃÄÅÆÇÈÉÊËÌÍÎÏÐÑÒÓÔÕÖ×ØÙÚÛÜÝÞßàáâãäåæçèéêëìíîïðñòóôõö÷øùúûüýþÿ
<br>ĀāĂ㥹ĆćĈĉĊċČčĎďĐđĒēĔĕĖėĘęĚěĜĝĞğĠġĢģĤĥĦħĨĩĪīĬĭĮįİıIJijĴĵĶķĸĹĺĻļĽľĿŀŁłŃńŅņŇňʼnŊŋ
<br>ŌōŎŏŐőŒœŔŕŖŗŘřŚśŜŝŞşŠšŢţŤťŦŧŨũŪūŬŭŮůŰűŲųŴŵŶŷŸŹźŻżŽžſ
<br>ǺǻǼǽǾǿ΄΅Ά·ΈΉΊΌΎΏΐ
<br>ΑΒΓΔΕΖΗΘΙΚΛΜΝΞΟΠΡΣΤΥΦΧΨΩΪΫάέήίΰ
<br>αβγδεζηθικλμνξοπρςστυφχψωϊϋόύώ
Note in particular that "Z" comes before "a", and "z" before "é". The blank space within a page name is treated as an underscore, and therefore comes after the capitals, and before the lower case letters. However, a "blank space" after the name comes before any character. Sometimes a special character looks like a regular letter, but has a special code anyway.
Thus we have the order PC, PCX, PC Bruno, PCjr, Κύρια Σελίδα.
==Conversion of spaces to underscores and of special characters to escape codes==
There is no feature for just conversion of spaces to underscores and of special characters to escape codes, but there are two features for doing this in combination with something else: localurl (see [[Help:Variable]]) and PAGENAMEE.
Most needs for conversion are covered by these, but e.g. in a template one cannot link to a page with a given name {{{1}}} on a project with a different [[mw:Help:$wgScript|$wgScript]].
=== Variables PAGENAME and PAGENAMEE ===
The [[Help:Variable|variable]] <nowiki>{{PAGENAME}}</nowiki> gives, for this page, '''{{PAGENAME}}'''. <nowiki>{{PAGENAMEE}}</nowiki> gives '''{{PAGENAMEE}}'''.
Thus in the first case a space is used, in the second case an underscore, like in URLs. Similarly, À becomes the escape code %C3%80 (see above), and so on.
<nowiki>{{NAMESPACE}}:{{PAGENAME}}</nowiki> and <nowiki>{{NAMESPACE}}:{{PAGENAMEE}}</nowiki> give for this page {{NAMESPACE}}:{{PAGENAME}} and {{NAMESPACE}}:{{PAGENAMEE}}, respectively. For a page in the main namespace, the page name is prefixed with a colon.
Example:
<nowiki>http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Whatlinkshere&target={{NAMESPACE}}:{{PAGENAMEE}}</nowiki>
gives
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Whatlinkshere&target={{NAMESPACE}}:{{PAGENAMEE}}
Within localurl, <nowiki>{{PAGENAME}}</nowiki> should be used in the first part (because it is converted by localurl), or <nowiki>{{PAGENAMEE}}</nowiki> in the second part:
*<nowiki>{{SERVER}}{{localurl:Special:Allpages|namespace=12&from={{PAGENAMEE}}}}</nowiki> gives here:
{{SERVER}}{{localurl:Special:Allpages|namespace=12&from={{PAGENAMEE}}}}
*<nowiki>{{SERVER}}{{localurl:Special:Allpages/{{PAGENAME}}|namespace=12}}</nowiki> gives here:
{{SERVER}}{{localurl:Special:Allpages/{{PAGENAME}}|namespace=12}}
Wrong:
*<nowiki>{{SERVER}}{{localurl:Special:Allpages|namespace=12&from={{PAGENAME}}}}</nowiki> gives here:
{{SERVER}}{{localurl:Special:Allpages|namespace=12&from={{PAGENAME}}}} (wrong link)
*<nowiki>{{SERVER}}{{localurl:Special:Allpages/{{PAGENAMEE}}|namespace=12}}</nowiki> gives here:
{{SERVER}}{{localurl:Special:Allpages/{{PAGENAMEE}}|namespace=12}} (works here, the underscore, converted from a space, is not affected by the second conversion, but it does not work with special characters).
==See also==
*[[Help:Link]] gives examples of conversions in the page name from wikitext to HTML, and from HTML to actual target page.
{{h:f|langs=|enname={{PAGENAME}}}}
