Editing Encyclopedia:Manual of Style (section)

===Keep markup simple===
{{Shortcut|MOS:MARKUP|MOS:SIMPLIFY}}
[[File:Keep it Simple.jpg|right|90px]]
Other things being equal, keep [[Help:Wiki markup|markup]] simple. This makes wikitext easier to understand and edit, and the results seen by the reader more predictable. Use HTML and CSS markup sparingly. See: [[KISS principle]].

In general, wikitext formatting is considered easier to use than HTML and wikitext is preferred if there are equivalents; see [[Help:HTML in wikitext]]. [[Wikipedia:HTML 5#Obsolete elements and attributes|Obsolete elements and attributes]] should be updated or removed. There are many templates that allow HTML markup to be used without putting it in articles directly, such as {{tl|em}} (see [[MOS:EMPHASIS]]) and {{tl|strong}} (see [[MOS:BOLD]]).

An [[Character entity reference|HTML character entity]] is sometimes better than the equivalent Unicode character, which may be difficult to identify in edit mode; for example, <code>&amp;Alpha;</code> is explicit whereas <code>&Alpha;</code> (the upper-case form of Greek <code>α</code>) may be misidentified as the Latin <code>A</code>.
{{further|Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Accessibility#Best practice: wiki markup and CSS classes}}