Editing Encyclopedia:Manual of Style (section)

===Section headings<span class="anchor" id="Section management"></span>===
{{Shortcut|MOS:HEAD|MOS:HEADINGS|MOS:SECTIONS|MOS:SECTIONHEAD}}
{{See also|Help:Section|Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Accessibility#Headings|Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Layout#Order of article elements|Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Capital letters#Section headings}}

Section headings should generally follow the guidance for [[#Article titles|article titles]] (above), and should be presented in [[sentence case]] ({{xt|Funding of UNESCO projects in developing countries}}), not title case ({{!xt|Funding of UNESCO Projects in Developing Countries}}).{{efn|name=Sentence case}}

{{shortcut|MOS:BLANKLINE}}
{{Anchor|Blank line}}
The heading must be on its own line, with one blank line just before it; a blank line just ''after'' is optional and ignored (but do not use ''two'' blank lines, before or after, because that will add unwanted visible space).

{{Anchor|Section headings (technical best practice)}}For technical reasons, section headings should:
*{{Anchor|Section headings (necessary point 1)}}Be unique within a page, so that [[Template:Section link|section link]]s lead to the correct place.
{{shortcut|MOS:NOSECTIONLINKS|MOS:HEADINGLINKS}}
*{{Anchor|Section headings (necessary point 2)}}Not contain [[Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Linking#Principles|link]]s, especially where only part of a heading is linked.
*{{Anchor|Section headings (necessary point 3)}}Not contain images or [[Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Icons#Encyclopedic purpose|icons]].
*{{Anchor|Section headings (necessary point 4)}}Not contain <[[Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Mathematics#Typesetting of mathematical formulae|math]]> markup.
*{{Anchor|Section headings (necessary point 5)}}Not contain citations or footnotes.
*{{Anchor|Section headings (necessary point 6)}}Not misuse [[Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lists#Description (definition, association) lists|description list]] markup ("<code>;</code>") to create [[Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Accessibility#Pseudo-headings|pseudo-headings]].
*{{Anchor|Section headings (necessary point 7)}}Not contain template transclusions.{{efn|1=For example in [[MOS:SECTIONANCHOR|section anchors]], {{xt|{{tls|Anchor}}}} should be used to substitute the template instead of {{!xt|{{tl|Anchor}}}} which would transclude it.}}

{{Anchor|Section headings (main technical reason)}}These technical restrictions are necessary to avoid technical complications and are not subject to override by local consensus.

{{anchor|1=SECTIONSTYLE|2=Section headings (styling best practice)}}As a matter of consistent style, section headings should:
{{Shortcut|MOS:SECTIONSTYLE|MOS:NOBACKREF}}
*{{Anchor|Section headings (style point 1)}}Not redundantly refer back to the subject of the article, e.g., {{xt|Early life}}, not {{!xt|Smith's early life}} or {{!xt|His early life}}.
*{{Anchor|Section headings (style point 2)}}Not refer to a higher-level heading, unless doing so is shorter or clearer.
*{{Anchor|Section headings (style point 3)}}Not be numbered or lettered as an outline.
*{{Anchor|Section headings (style point 4)}}Not be phrased as a question, e.g., {{xt|Languages}}, not {{!xt|What languages are spoken in Mexico?}}.
*{{Anchor|Section headings (style point 5)}}Not use color or unusual fonts that may cause [[Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Accessibility#Headings|accessibility problems]].
*{{Anchor|Section headings (style point 6)}}Not be wrapped in [[Help:Wikitext|markup]], which may break their display and cause other accessibility issues.

{{Anchor|Section headings (main styling reason)}}These are broadly accepted community preferences.
{{Anchor|SECTIONCOMMENT|Section comment}}
{{short|MOS:SECTIONCOMMENT}}
A [[#Invisible comments|hidden comment]] on the same line must be {{em|inside}} the <code>==&nbsp;==</code> markup:{{efn|1=A comment outside the <code><nowiki>==&nbsp;==</nowiki></code> but on the same line may cause the section-editing link to fail to appear at all; in other browsers, it may appear, but using it will cause the section heading to not automatically be added to the edit summary.}}
{{block indent|1={{plainlist|
* {{y}} <code><nowiki>== Implications<!--This comment works fine.--> ==</nowiki></code>
* {{y}} <code><nowiki>== <!--This comment works fine.-->Implications == </nowiki></code>
* {{N}} <code><nowiki>== Implications == <!--This comment causes problems.--> </nowiki></code>
* {{N}} <code><nowiki><!--This comment breaks the heading completely.--> == Implications == </nowiki></code>
}}
}}
It is preferred to put such comments {{em|below}} the heading.

{{Anchor|SECTIONANCHOR|Section anchor}}
{{short|MOS:SECTIONANCHOR}}
<section begin="heading links" />Before changing a heading, consider whether you might be breaking existing links to it.<section end="heading links" /> If there are many [[Help:Link#To a section|links to the old title]],{{efn|name="many links"|1=To find out how many inlinks there are to the old section title and what articles have them, you can execute <span class=plainlinks>[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=all%3A+linksto%3A%22ARTICLE%22+insource%3A%2F%5B%5B%7C%5DARTICLE%5C%23OLDSECTION%2F+&title=Special:Search&profile=all&fulltext=1 this advanced search]</span>, changing {{smallcaps|article}} to the name of the article, and {{smallcaps|oldsection}} to the old section title. That advanced search does not search [[Wikipedia:Redirect|redirects]], so also check the article's [[Special:WhatLinksHere]] page for redirects to the old section title. If there are only a small number of links to the old section title, it may be better to just update them manually.}} create an [[Help:Anchor|anchor]] with that title to ensure that these still work. Similarly, when linking to a section, leave an invisible comment at the heading of the target section, naming the linking articles, so that if the heading is later altered these can be easily fixed, or alternatively another anchor can be created if there are many.{{efn|name="many links"}} For (a combined) example:
{{block indent|1=
{{xt|1=<code><nowiki>==Implications{{subst:Anchor|Consequences}}==</nowiki><br /><nowiki><!-- Section linked from [[Richard Dawkins]], [[Daniel Dennett]]. --></nowiki></code>}}
}}
which will be saved in the article as:
{{block indent|1=
{{xt|1=<code>==Implications{{code|1={{Anchor|Consequences}}}}==<br /><nowiki><!-- Section linked from [[Richard Dawkins]], [[Daniel Dennett]]. --></nowiki></code>}}
}}

The advantage of using {{tltss|Anchor}}, or simply inserting the {{tag|span|o|link=yes}} tags directly, is that when edits are made to the section in the future, the anchor will not be included in page history entries as part of the section name. When <code><nowiki>{{Anchor}}</nowiki></code> is used directly, that undesirable behavior ''does'' occur. Note: if electing to insert the span directly, {{em|do not}} abbreviate it by using a self-closing tag, as in <code><nowiki>==Implications<span id="Consequences"</nowiki>{{highlight round|/|bc=#ffa07a}}<nowiki>>==</nowiki></code>, since in HTML5 that XML-style syntax is valid only for certain tags, such as {{nowrap |<code>&lt;br /></code>}}.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T134423 |title=T134423 Deprecate nonstandard behavior of self-closed HTML tags in wikitext. |website=phabricator.wikimedia.org |access-date=2019-09-25}}</ref> See {{section link|Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Linking|Avoiding broken section links}} for further discussion.

====Heading-like material====
The above guidance about sentence case, redundancy, images, and questions also applies to [[Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Tables#Captions and headers|headers of tables]] (and of table columns and rows). However, table headings can incorporate citations and may begin with, or be, numbers. Unlike page headings, table headers do not automatically generate link anchors. Aside from sentence case in glossaries, the heading advice also applies to the ''term'' entries in [[Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lists#DLIST|description lists]]. If using [[Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Glossaries#Linking|template-structured glossaries]], terms will automatically have link anchors, but will not otherwise. Citations for description-list content go in the ''term'' or ''definition'' element, as needed.