 | This help page is ahow-to guide. It explains concepts or processes used by the Wikipedia community. It is not one ofWikipedia's policies or guidelines, and may reflect varying levels ofconsensus. |
| Linking and page manipulation |
|---|
Thecolon trick is a method of providing a link to acategory,image orinterwiki link without adding the page to the category, displaying the image or adding the interwiki link to theinterlanguage links. It also allows for linking to pages with titles beginning with a recognized external link prefix, such ashttp:// or//Hus.
By adding acolon just inside the opening double square brackets of the link, the default behaviour of theMediaWiki software will be bypassed. It will appear as a conventionalwikilink.
[[Category:Help]] would list this page in Category:Help, but[[:Category:Help]] will produce a link toCategory:Help.[[File:Wikipedia-logo.png]] would display an image, but[[:File:Wikipedia-logo.png]] will produce a link toFile:Wikipedia-logo.png.
[[pt:Internet]] will create aninterlanguage link, but[[:pt:Internet]] will produce an interwiki link topt:Internet (in the Portuguese Wikipedia).[[//Hus]] will produce an (invalid) external link wrapped in brackets ("[[1]]"), but[[://Hus]] will produce a link to//Hus.[[Computer]] links to theComputer article; adding a colon like[[:Computer]] can be done, but the colon is unneeded and makes no difference.A colon can also be used to transclude a page in mainspace, rather than template space. For example,{{The Beatles}} will transcludeTemplate:The Beatles, but{{:The Beatles}} will transclude the mainspace articleThe Beatles. This is useful when the mainspace article has been specially formatted to be transcluded in other articles, by using <noinclude> or <includeonly> tags to indicate the portion that should be included when the article is transcluded.
Normally, linking to auser page in anedit summary sends a notification to the user. A colon can be used to escape this behaviour. For example, the edit summary "corrected typo by [[User:Example]]" will pingUser:Example, but "corrected typo by [[:User:Example]]" will not.