Editing Encyclopedia:Redirect (section)

== What needs to be done on pages that are targets of redirects? ==
{{Anchor|PLA|pla|ASTONISH|SURPRISE|WP:RBOLD}}
{{Shortcut|WP:RPLA|WP:RASTONISH|WP:RSURPRISE}}
{{Further|MOS:BOLD#OTHER{{!}}Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Text formatting &sect; Boldface &sect; Other uses|Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lead section#Alternative names}}

Wikipedia follows the "[[Wikipedia:Guide to writing better articles#Principle of least astonishment|principle of least astonishment]]"; after following a redirect, the reader's first question is likely to be: "Hang on&nbsp;... I wanted to read about {{em|this}}. Why has the link taken me to {{em|that}}{{-?}}" Make it clear to the reader that they {{em|have}} arrived in the right place.

Most (but not all) "inbound redirects" other than misspellings or other obvious close variants of the article title should be mentioned in the first couple of paragraphs of the article or section to which the redirect goes. It will often be appropriate to [[MOS:BOLDREDIRECT|put the redirected term in bold]] at its first occurrence in the target. For example:
* '''Alice Bradley Sheldon''' (August 24, 1915 – May 19, 1987) was an American science fiction and fantasy author better known as '''James Tiptree Jr.''' ...
** [[James Tiptree Jr.]], redirects from [[Alice Sheldon]]

If other articles titled a redirected term exist, a [[WP:Hatnote|hatnote]] should be placed at the top of the target article or targeted section that will direct readers to the other meanings or to a relevant [[WP:DAB|disambiguation]] page. This is usually done using one of the [[Template:Redirect|redirect disambiguation templates]] {{crossref|pw=y|([[Wikipedia:HATTEST#Redirect|examples]])}}.

It may also be helpful to [[Help:Searching|search]] the [[Help:Category#Listing all categories|List of Categories]] for [[Wikipedia:FAQ/Categories#Can I specify categories when searching?|related terms]].