This is aninformation page. It is neither anencyclopedia article nor one ofWikipedia's policies or guidelines; rather, its purpose is to explain certain aspects of Wikipedia's norms, customs, technicalities, or practices. It may reflect differing levels ofconsensus andvetting.

Shortcuts WP:SDESCWP:SDESC WP:SHORTDESWP:SHORTDES WP:SHORTDESCWP:SHORTDESC

This page in a nutshell: The short description of a Wikipedia article is a brief phrase, with aspecific format, designed to work together with the title to indicate the article's scope. Every articlewhose title is not already fully self-explanatory should have a short description. The short description appears with the title in lists such as search results, helping users identify the desired article. A short description is not intended as a definition.

Theshort description of a Wikipedia page is a brief phrase intended tocomplement and clarify the page title, particularly in contexts where this is seen in isolation from the page itself. Taken together, the title and short description concisely explain the subject of the page—for example, to help a user identify the desired article in a list of search results.

Short descriptions appear in the results of Wikipedia mobile and some desktop searches,^{[note 1]} and are also displayed immediately below the title on the article page itself by some mobileWikipedia apps.

The default desktop view of an article does not show the short description, but logged-in users can change this by enabling theShortdesc helper in theGadgets section of theirPreferences. Short descriptions are then displayed and are directly editable.

Short descriptions provide:

• a short descriptive annotation to the title
• together with the title, a very brief indication of the field covered
• adisambiguation in searches, especially between similarly titled subjects in different fields

Short descriptions are also used asannotations in lists of links, such as in "See also" sections andindex list articles, where they provide some context for the link when a local annotation is not provided. The template{{Annotated link}} is available for this purpose.

All mainspace articles should have a short description (including those with a short description "none"; seebelow). Redirects and most pages outside the mainspace do not normally need a description, although one may be added in the rare cases it would be useful.

The short description may appear directly in the wikicode for the page, via the{{Short description}} template, or may betranscluded automatically from atemplate such as an infobox. Disambiguation pages make use of transcluded descriptions, and those do not normally need to be edited manually.

The short description is part of the article content, and is subject to the normal rules on content, includingNeutral point of view andBiographies of living persons. The normal editing rules such asConsensus and theEditing policy also apply.

As explained in more detail below, the aim is not to provide a definition of the article's topic, nor to summarise the lead. Instead, concentrate on thepurpose of the short description: to complement the title with additional useful information in such a way that a user who sees the two together can easily tell what the article is about and distinguish it from other similarly-titled ones.

What this entails will depend on how self-explanatory the title itself is, and each article should therefore have its own purpose-written short description. It is each editor's responsibility to ensure the short description is appropriate, accurate, and compliant with Wikipedia's policies; this is particularly important for biographies of living people and for medical articles. While theShortdesc helper tool allows text to be imported from Wikidata, that should be done with caution as Wikidata descriptions do not follow Wikipedia policies, and are often inappropriate: see§ Why not simply re-use Wikidata's item descriptions?.

When visible on desktop or mobile, the short description immediately follows the article title, and the two should be comprehensible when read together.

A short description is not intended as a definition, and editors should not attempt to define the article's subject, nor to summarise the lead. There is no objection to a suitable short description that also happens to work as a definition.

As far as possible, it should:

• focus on thepurposes stated above
• start with the most important information (mobile applications may truncate long descriptions)
• use universally accepted facts that will not be subject to rapid change, avoiding anything that could be understood as controversial, judgemental, or promotional
• avoid jargon, and use simple, readily comprehensible terms that do not require pre-existing detailed knowledge of the subject
• avoid duplicating information that is already in the title (but don't worry too much if you need to repeat a word or two for context)
• avoid time-specific adjectives like "former", "retired", "late", "defunct", "closed", "current", "new", "recent", "planned", "future", etc.
• avoid subjective adjectives like "small", "famous", "popular"

Each short description should:

• be written in plain text – without any type ofmarkup or pictorial elements
• start with a capital letter^{[note 2]}
• avoid starting with anarticle (A,An,The) except when required for correct grammar and meaning
• avoid using a finalfull stop (period) as end-of-sentence punctuation; a short description is not a full sentence
• beshort – no longer than is needed to fulfillits functions effectively
  • 83% of short descriptions use 40 characters or fewer (including spaces).
  • Only 2% of short descriptions are longer than 60 characters, and short descriptions longer than 100 characters will be flagged for attention.
  • Short descriptions exceeding 40 characters may be truncated in some contexts. See the screen shots at#Purposes above for examples.^{[note 3]}
  • Because they are intended to be scanned quickly, longer and more detailed descriptions can be less useful.

A good way to draft a short description is to consider the words that would naturally follow if you started a sentence like this:

[Article subject] is/was a/an/the …

You can then use those additional words as the short description. So for example if you wanted to write a short description forStève Nzigamasabo, your sentence would be "Stève Nzigamasabo is aBurundian footballer", andBurundian footballer becomes your short description.

Here are some more examples, though they can all be varied if the context allows something better. Remember to ensure that your description is short (§ Formatting). See also§ Inclusion of dates.

In all cases, provide what information you reasonably can, remembering that your descriptionis expected to be short and that you arenot aiming to write a definition.

Dates or date ranges are encouraged when they enhance the short description as an annotation or improve disambiguation. As long as theformatting criteria are met, biographies of non-living people, articles on specific publications, and dated historical events generally benefit from dating, but since the description should be kept short, other information may need to take precedence. Care should be taken when thebiographies of living persons (BLP) policy applies: birth years for living people may be included only ifreliably sourced within the article.

Recommended date formats are given below, but these can be varied if there is contrary consensus on the talk page. In biographies, distinguish between dates defining a lifespan"(birthyear–deathyear)" and those defining a period in office"from startyear to endyear". For historical biographies, specific dates such as "1750–1810" are preferred over "18th-century" for clarity. Other dated events or ranges can use any format as long as the meaning is clear.

Where a date is not known exactly, "c. " may be used for "circa". Other examples are given atWP:APPROXDATE, although "fl. " for "floruit" should be avoided as it is not universally understood. Centuries should not be abbreviated "c. " due to the potential for confusion with "circa".

All articles should have a short description, but some article titles are sufficiently self-explanatory to English language speakers worldwide that a descriptive annotation would not be helpful. Such articles can be given the short description "none".

A short description should never be the same as the article's title. If theprimary purposes of a short description are entirely met by the title wording, that is a good indication that "none" would be appropriate.

The short description "none" should be used sparingly, and only where the entirety of the title will be reasonably clear to English-speaking readers worldwide. Bear in mind that readers outside your own country or culture may never have come across terms that to you are extremely well-known. Rather than using "none", try where you can to construct a short description that imparts useful information.

A decision on whether to use "none" should always be based on the comprehensibility of the words used in the title, and not on the form of the title. Articles should be assessed on their own merits, and editors using semi-automated tools to write short descriptions must never assume that all articles with a title of a particular form (e.g., "List ofx") should be treated in the same way.

To use "none", add{{Short description|none}} at the top of the page; this ensures that the article appears inCategory:Articles with short description. Occasionally, a default value of "none" may already be transcluded by a template; that default should not normally need to be edited, but it can be overridden for a specific page by adding{{Short description|Overriding description}} at the top of the page.

Articles with titles such as "List ofx", "History ofx", "Flag ofx", "x in [country]", or similar should not be given a short description "none"solely because they are lists or have a title of a particular form. Instead, write an individual short description that provides the reader with some useful information aboutx. Use the short description "none" only if the meaning ofx itself is reasonably clear to English-speaking readers worldwide.

Articles titled "[Something] of x" or "x in[place or concept]" will often benefit from a short description similar to the one used for the main article aboutx itself. For example, a good short description forList ofFriends episodes would be "Episodes of American television sitcom". It should not be "none", since the term "Friends" – no matter how well known to readers familiar with American TV – will not necessarily be clear to other English-speaking readers worldwide. The short description for the articleFriends ("American television sitcom (1994–2004)") provides a useful guide for the related "List of" article.

If there is little space, write a short description that coversx alone: it is not essential to repeat the evident words such as "List of". You may not be able to gloss every term, but do the best you can while keeping the description short.

The easiest way to create and edit short descriptions on desktop is to use theShortdesc helper gadget. This may be enabled inthe Gadgets tab of your Preferences under the "Editing" section.

Alternatively, you can manually amend the{{Short description}} template in the source editor. Short descriptions cannot be added with theVisualEditor.

If you are editing manually on desktop and do not have Shortdesc Helper loaded, do not add the templatesolely because it seems to be missing from the wikicode. Descriptions are sometimes set by another template (such as an Infobox) elsewhere in the article. See§ Why can't I see any short description? for more information.

If you are editing manually, do not start the template with a space —{{ Short description...}} — as this may break other templates which search for{{Short description...}} in the text.

Always use the{{Short description}} template itself and not any alias. SeeWP:SDNOALIASES in the template documentation.

PerMOS:ORDER andMOS:LEADORDER, the template should be the very first element on the page. There is just one exception to this, namely redirects. If (unusually) you need to add a short description to a redirect, you should add{{Short description}}below#REDIRECT. For more information, see§ Short descriptions on redirect pages. Placement is handled automatically if you are usingShortdesc helper.

Where a single short description (or rule for generating one) is suitable for multiple articles that all use the same template/infobox, the description can be transcluded from the template rather than being added one by one to each article. In that case{{Short description}} does not appear in the wikicode for the page.

Such transclusions are normally done after local consensus by template editors.{{Template short description}} is available to simplify the process, and ensures that the resultant description doesn't exceed the recommended length even if a page editor adds some unusually long text to an infobox. All templates that generate a default description should include a|2=noreplace parameter so that the result can be overridden by a manually inserted instance that appears at the top of the wikicode (seeT193857 for technical details).{{Auto short description}} should also be added to the documentation page so that the template gets added toCategory:Templates that generate short descriptions.

By default, short descriptions are not displayed when viewing an article in desktop view. To make them visible on the page and to enable easy editing, enableShortdesc helper in yourgadgets preferences. On the desktop platform, short descriptions appear below article titles in search result lists only if you are using theVector 2022 skin (the default desktop view). In Preferences |Appearance, make sure theVector 2022 radio button is selected.

You can always see whether the page has amanual short description by opening it for source editing (notvisual editing); you should find{{Short description}} right at the top. Unfortunately, its absence there does not necessarily mean there is no short description, as one may betranscluded from some template such as an infobox. That can't be determined from the page code (at least without following through to the template code pages), hence the recommendation to enableShortdesc helper.

As mentioned above, please don't add a new short descriptionsolely on the basis that{{Short description}} is missing from the wikicode.

Wikipedia's short descriptions andWikidata's item descriptions serve different purposes, and their respective wordings are very often different:

• A short description is Wikipedia-specific and relates to an individual encyclopedia article here on the English Wikipedia. It provides a brief indication of the field, an annotation, and a disambiguation in searches, not for any Wikidata item but for the encyclopedia article itself.
• In contrast, a Wikidata item description is designed to disambiguate Wikidata items with the same or similar labels and serves to characterise the Wikidata item, regardless of the content of any corresponding Wikipedia article (or indeed whether a Wikipedia article for the item exists at all).

Wikidata item descriptions are not subject to Wikipedia's policies or recommendations, and in practice are often too long and intricate for use as Wikipedia short descriptions (seeWP:SDSHORT, above). There are technical differences, too: for example, short descriptions normally start with an uppercase letter whereas Wikidata item descriptions generally use lowercase.

Most redirects do not require a short description. Occasionally it may be useful to add one:

1. on soft redirects where an annotation would make the page clearer
2. where the target of the redirect is not an obvious synonym and to inherit its SD would thus not be appropriate
3. where the redirection page is to asection of the target page and thus a more specific SD is required
4. as an indicator that the topic described may be a valid article topic (Redirects with possibilities).

{{Short description}} conflicts with#REDIRECT if placed in the standard position at the top of the page. For such pagesonly, the template should be placed immediately underneath #REDIRECT.

The short description of aRedirect to section should refer to thesection content and should not generally be the same as that of the article itself.

The{{Annotated link}} template may be used to annotate a wikilink with the corresponding short description from the article. This may be useful where links to multiple articles are presented in the form of a list, for example in "See also" sections. Doing so makes the content of an article more evident to visitors unfamiliar with the terminology of a subject area.

{{Annotated link}} does not follow redirects, and if the link has to point to a redirect it may be appropriate to add a short description to the redirect page itself, as it would in this case normally be a redirect with possibilities. In other cases it may be more appropriate to change to a direct link, or use a piped alias. The template should not be used for annotating links on disambiguation pages, for the reasons stated in the template documentation.

The{{AnnotatedListOfLinks}} template may help editors quickly apply{{Annotated link}} to multiple listed links at once.

At present,{{Annotated link}} cannot "see" short descriptions transcluded from infoboxes and is thus unable to display then.

• Category:Pages with empty short description (21)
• Category:Pages with lower-case short description (0)

• Category:Pages with short description
• Category:Short description is different from Wikidata
• Category:Short description matches Wikidata
• Category:Short description with empty Wikidata description

• Wikipedia:WikiProject Short descriptions – Project to improve short descriptions
• Template:Short description
• Wikidata Help:Description
• Help:Wikidata

• Wikipedia information pages

• Wikipedia semi-protected project pages
• Pages using gallery without a media namespace prefix