 | Thisguideline is a part of the English Wikipedia'sManual of Style. Editors should generally follow it, thoughexceptions may apply.Substantive edits to this page should reflectconsensus. When in doubt, discuss first onthis guideline's talk page. |
 | This page in a nutshell: The lead should identify the topic and summarize the body of the article with appropriate weight. |
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In Wikipedia, thelead section is an introduction to an article and a summary of its most important contents. It is located at the beginning of the article, before thetable of contents and the firstheading.It isnot a news-stylelead or "lede" paragraph.
The average Wikipedia visit is a few minutes long.[1] The lead is the first thing most people read upon arriving at an article, and may be the only portion of the article that they read.[A] It gives the basics in a nutshell, introduces the article, and cultivates interest in reading on—though not by teasing the reader or hinting at what follows. It should be written in a clear, accessible style with aneutral point of view.
The lead should stand on its own as a concise overview of the article's topic. It should identify the topic, establish context, explain why the topic isnotable, and summarize the most important points, including any prominent controversies.[B] The notability of the article's subject is usually established in the first few sentences. As in thebody of the article itself, the emphasis given to material in the lead should roughlyreflect its importance to the topic, according toreliable, published sources. Apart from basic facts, significant information should not appear in the lead if it is not covered in the remainder of the article.
A lead section should be carefully sourced as appropriate, although it is common for citations to appear in the body and not the lead.
The lead section may contain optional elements presented in the following order: short description, disambiguation links (dablinks/hatnotes), maintenance tags, infoboxes, special character warning box, images, navigational boxes (navigational templates), introductory text, and table of contents, moving to the heading of the first section.
Structure of lead section:
{{Short description}}{{Hatnote}}{{Article for deletion}}{{Copy edit}}{{Use American English}}{{Use mdy dates}}{{Infobox rocket|name=...}}{{Contains special characters}}[[File:TypicalRocket.gif|...|A typical rocket]]{{Rocket navigation sidebar}}A'''rocket''' is a ...==First section==
The lead section must conform toverifiability,biographies of living persons, and other policies. The verifiability policy states thatall quotations, and any material whose verifiability has been challenged or is likely to be challenged, must include aninline citation to a reliable source thatdirectly supports it.
Because the lead usually repeats information that is in the body, editors should balance the desire to avoid redundant citations in the lead with the desire to aid readers in locating sources for challengeable material. Although the presence of citations in the lead is neither required in every article nor prohibited in any article, there is no exception to citation requirements specific to leads. The necessity for citations in a lead should be determined on a case-by-case basis by editorialconsensus. Complex, current, or controversial subjects may require many citations; others, few or none.
As editors are often unaware of this guideline, good faith should be assumed when{{citation needed}} tags are added to lead sections sometimes erroneously.{{Leadcite comment}} can be added to article leads that often attract unwarranted{{citation needed}} tags.
The lead section should briefly summarize the most important points covered in an article, in such a way that it can stand on its own as a concise version of the article. The reason for a topic's noteworthiness should be established, or at least introduced, in the lead (but not by using subjectivepeacock terms such as "acclaimed" or "award-winning" or "hit"). It is even more important here than in the rest of the article that the text be accessible. Editors should avoid lengthy paragraphs and overly specific descriptions – greater detail is saved for thebody of the article. The body is allowed to repeat points from the lead, since the lead summarizes the points of the body and the body provides elaboration on those points, which are usually reiterated. Consideration should be given to creating interest in the article, butdo not hint at startling facts without describing them.
Make the lead section accessible to as broad an audience as possible. Where possible, avoid difficult-to-understandterminology, symbols, mathematical equations and formulas. Where uncommon terms are essential, they should be placed in context, linked, and briefly defined. The subject should be placed in a context familiar to a normal reader. For example, it is better to describe the location of a town with reference to an area or larger place than with coordinates. Readers should not be dropped into the middle of the subject from the first word; they should be eased into it.
According tothe policy on due weight, emphasis given to material should reflect its relative importance to the subject, according to publishedreliable sources. This is true for both the lead section and the body of the article. If there is a difference in emphasis between the two, editors should seek to resolve the discrepancy.
Significant information should not appear in the lead, apart from basic facts, if it is not covered in the remainder of the article, although not everything in the lead must be repeated in the body of the text. Exceptions include specific facts such asquotations, examples, birth dates,taxonomic names andtypological classifications,case numbers, andtitles. This admonition should not be taken as a reason to exclude information from the lead, but rather to harmonize coverage in the lead with material in the body of the article.
The first paragraph shoulddefine or identify the topic with aneutral point of view, but without being too specific. It should establish the context in which the topic is being considered by supplying the set of circumstances or facts that surround it. If appropriate, it should give the location and time. It should also establish the boundaries of the topic; for example, the lead for the articleList of environmental issues succinctly states that the list covers "harmful aspects of human activity on the biophysical environment".
The first sentence should introduce the topic, and tellthe nonspecialist readerwhat orwho the subject is, and oftenwhen orwhere. It should be inplain English.
Do not overload the first sentence by describing everything notable about the subject. Instead, spread the relevant information out over the entire lead. Avoid cluttering the first sentence with a long parenthetical containing items like alternative spellings and pronunciations: these can make the sentence difficult to read. This information should be placed elsewhere, such as in the|pronunciation= or|native_name= parameters of an infobox, or in anexplanatory footnote, to avoid clutter.[C]
If anarticle's title is a formal or widely accepted name for the subject, display it in bold as early as possible in the first sentence:
Otherwise, include the title if it can be accommodated in a natural way:
Only the first occurrence of the title andsignificantalternative names (which should usually alsoredirect to the article)[M] are placed in bold:
Common abbreviations (in parentheses after the corresponding title) are considered significant alternative names in this sense:
If an article is about an event involving a subject about which there is no main article, especially if the article is thetarget of a redirect, the subject should be in bold:
Do not boldface non-English names not normally used in English.(See§ Other languages.)
Do not boldface alternative names on theMain Page.
If the subject of the article is closely associated with a non-English language, a single equivalent name in another language may be included in the lead sentence, usually in parentheses. For example, an article about a location in a non-English-speaking country typically includes the local-language equivalent:
Do not include non-English equivalents in the text of the lead sentence for alternative names or for particularly lengthy names, as this clutters the lead sentence and impairs readability. Do not include non-English equivalents in the lead sentence just to show etymology. Non-English names should be moved to a footnote or elsewhere in the article if they would otherwise clutter the first sentence.[N]
Separate languages should be divided bysemicolons;romanizations of non-Latin scripts, bycommas. Do not boldface non-English names not normally used in English. Some non-English terms should be italicized. These cases are described in theManual of Style for text formatting.
Keepredundancy to a minimum in the first sentence. Use the first sentence of the article to provide relevant information that isnot already given by the title of the article.The title need not appear verbatim in the lead if it is descriptive.For example:
The statementrelations are the relations does not help a reader who does not know the meaning ofdiplomatic relations. The second version sensibly includes new information (that relations were established in 1947) in the first sentence, rather than repeating the title.
If the article's title does not lend itself to being used easily and naturally in the first sentence, the wording should not be distorted in an effort to include it. Instead, simply describe the subject in normal English, avoiding unnecessary redundancy.
The2011 Mississippi River floods were a series offloods affecting theMississippi River in April and May 2011, which were among the largest and most damaging recorded along theU.S. waterway in the past century.
Majorfloods along theMississippi River in April and May 2011 were among the largest and most damaging recorded along theU.S. waterway in the past century.Sometimes a little redundancy is unavoidable. For example, theOxford English Dictionary (OED) has to be called by its proper name in its article, and cannot be called anything other than adictionary in the first sentence. Even in these cases, the first sentence should provide information not given in the title. But try to rephrase whenever possible. Instead of:
consider:
Both contain some redundancy, but the second is better because it tells us that the OED is the world'smost respected dictionary of English.
Links should not be placed in theboldface reiteration of the title in the first sentence of a lead:[O][P]
TheBabe Ruth Award is given annually to theMajor League Baseball (MLB) player with the best performance in thepostseason.
TheBabe Ruth Award is given annually to theMajor League Baseball (MLB) player with the best performance in thepostseason. The award, created in honor ofBabe Ruth, was first awarded in 1949 to the MVP of theWorld Series, one year after Ruth's death.As an exception, disambiguation pages may use bolding forthe link to the primary topic, if there is one.
In general, if the article's title (or a significant alternative title) is absent from the first sentence, do not apply the bold style to related text thatdoes appear (example from1999 Nepalese general election):
General elections were held inNepal on May 3 and May 17, 1999. General elections were held inNepal on May 3 and May 17, 1999.If the title of the page is normallyitalicized (for example, a work of art, literature, album, or ship) then its first mention should be both bold and italic text:
If the mention of the article's title is surrounded by quotation marks, the title should be bold but the quotation marks should not be:
If the name of the article has a pronunciation that is not apparent from its spelling, include itspronunciation in parentheses after the first occurrence of the name. Most such terms are non-English words or phrases (mate,coup d'état), proper nouns (Ralph Fiennes,Tuolumne River,Tao Te Ching), or very unusual English words (synecdoche,atlatl). It is preferable to move pronunciation guides to a footnote or elsewhere in the article if they would otherwise clutter the first sentence.[N]Do not include pronunciation guides for non-English translations of the article title in the text of the lead sentence, as this clutters the lead sentence and impairs readability.
Do not include in the text of the lead sentence pronunciations for names of locations that are associated with non-English languages but whose pronunciations are well known in English (e.g.,Poland,Paris). Do not include them for common English words, even if their pronunciations are counterintuitive for learners (laughter,sword). If the name of the article is more than one word, include pronunciation only for the words that need it unless all are in other languages (all ofJean van Heijenoort but onlyCholmondeley inThomas P. G. Cholmondeley). A fuller discussion of pronunciation can come later in the article.
The first sentence should provide links to the broader or more elementary topics that are important to the article's topic or place it into thecontext where it isnotable.
For example, an article about a building or location should include a link to the broader geographical area of which it is a part.
In an article about a technical or jargon term, the first sentence or paragraph should normally contain a link to thefield of study that the term comes from.
Thefirst sentence of an article about a person should link to the page or pages about the topic where the person achieved prominence.
Exactly what provides the context needed to understand a given topic varies greatly from topic to topic.
Do not, however, add contextual links that don't relate directly to the topic's definition or reason for notability. For example,Van Cliburn's first sentence links toCold War because his fame came partly from his Tchaikovsky Competition victory being used as a Cold War symbol. The first sentence of a page about someone who rose to fame in the 1950s for reasons unrelated to the Cold War should not mention the Cold War at all, even though the Cold War is part of the broader historical context of that person's life. By the same token,do not link to years unless the year has some special salience to the topic.
Most Featured Articles contain about 12 to 25 links in the lead, with an average of about 1.5 links per sentence or one link for every 16 words.
Links appearing ahead of the bolded term distract from the topic if not necessary to establish context, and should be omitted even if they might be appropriate elsewhere in the text. For example, a person's title or office, such as colonel, naturally appears ahead of their name, but the word "Colonel" should not have a link, since it doesn't establish context. (Do not, however, reword a sentence awkwardly just to keep a needed contextual link from getting ahead of the bolded term.)
When a common (vernacular) name is used as the article title, the boldfaced common name is followed by the italic boldfaced scientific name in round parentheses in the first sentence of the lead. Alternative names should be mentioned and reliably sourced in the text where applicable, with bold type in the lead if they are in wide use, or elsewhere in the article (with or without the bold type, per editorial discretion) if they are less used. It is not necessary to include non-English common names, unless they are also commonly used in English, e.g. regionally; if included, they should be italicized as non-English.
When the article title is the scientific name, reverse the order of the scientific and common name(s) (if any of the latter are given), and boldface as well as italicize the scientific name. Avoid putting the most common name in parentheses (this suppresses its display in some views of Wikipedia, includingWikipedia:Pop-ups andGoogle Knowledge Graph).
Brassica oleracea is thespecies of plant that includes many common foods ascultivars, includingcabbage,broccoli,cauliflower,kale,Brussels sprouts,savoy, andChinese kale ...
In some cases the definition of the article topic in the opening paragraph may be insufficient to fully constrain the scope of the article. In particular, it may be necessary to identify material that isnot within scope. For instance, the article onfever notes that an elevated core body temperature due tohyperthermia is not within scope. These explanations may best be done at the end of the lead section to avoid cluttering and confusing the first paragraph. This information and other meta material in the lead is not expected to appear in the body of the article.
A summary of the key points inthe main guideline on this:
For more information on biographical leads in general, see the main guideline:Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Biography
Underthe main guideline on this, the opening paragraph of a biographical article should neutrally describe the person, provide context, establishnotability and explain why the person is notable, and reflect the balance of reliable sources.
The first sentence should usually state:
However, try to not overload the first sentence by describing everything notable about the subject; instead, spread relevant information over the lead section.
Examples:
Cesar Estrada Chavez (March 31, 1927 – April 23, 1993) was an American labor leader and civil rights activist who, withDolores Huerta, co-founded theNational Farm Workers Association, which later became theUnited Farm Workers (UFW) ...
François Maurice Adrien Marie Mitterrand (26 October 1916 – 8 January 1996) wasPresident of France from 1981 to 1995, ...
Sir Lewis Carl Davidson Hamilton (born 7 January 1985) is a British racing driver ...
The basic instructions for biographical names are summarized below;the main guideline on this provides additional detail.
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By the design of Wikipedia's software, an article can have only one title. When this title is a name, significant alternative names for the topic should be mentioned in the article. These may include alternative spellings, longer or shorter forms, historical names, and significant names in other languages. Indeed, alternative names can be used in article text in contexts where they are more appropriate than the name used as the title of the article. For example, the city now called "Gdańsk" can be referred to as "Danzig" in suitable historical contexts.
The editor needs to balance the desire to maximize the information available to the reader with the need to maintain readability. Use this principle to decide whether mentioning alternative names in the first sentence, elsewhere in the article, or not at all.
| Option | Example | When to use | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| In the first sentence | Acookie (American English) orbiscuit (British English) is a baked good... | Best when there are only one or two alternative names | ||||||
| Inparentheses | Munich (/ˈmjuːnɪk/MEW-nik;German:München[ˈmʏnçn̩]ⓘ;Bavarian:Minga[ˈmɪŋ(ː)ɐ]ⓘ) is a city... | Most popular when there are one or two non-English names, and commonly used for abbreviations and former names | ||||||
| In a footnote | Gdańsk[α] is a city...
| Best for complex material | ||||||
| In an infobox | Medical condition
| Useful when there are a large number of alternative names and pronunciations | ||||||
If there are three or more alternative names, they should not be included in the first sentence as this creates clutter. Instead, the names may be footnoted, or moved elsewhere in the article such as in a "Names" or "Etymology" section. As an exception, a local official name different from a widely accepted English name should be retained in the lead.
Archaic names, including names used before thestandardization of English orthography should be clearly marked as such, i.e., (archaic: name), and should not be placed in the first sentence.
Wikipedia's naming conventionsrecommend the use of English. However, where the subject of an article is best known in English-language sources by its non-English name (e.g.,Taj Mahal,Champs-Élysées), the non-English title may be appropriate for the article.Relevant non-English names, such as those of people who do not write their names in English, are encouraged.
For use of other languages in the first sentence, see§ Inclusion of foreign equivalents above.
Where the article is astub and has no section headings, a lead section may not be necessary. Although Wikipedia encourages expanding stubs, this may be impossible if reliably sourced information is not available. Once an article has been sufficiently expanded, generally to around 400 or 500 words, editors should consider introducing section headings and removing the stub classification. Articles that are shorter than a well-written lead usually do not need a lead.
The appropriate length of the lead section depends on the complexity of the subject and development of the article. Too short leaves the reader unsatisfied; too long is intimidating, difficult to read, and may cause the reader to lose interest halfway. These suggestions may be useful:
Lead sections that reflect or expand on sections in other articles are discussed atSummary style. Journalistic conventions for lead sections are discussed in the articleNews style.
All users can edit the lead by clicking the edit link of the whole article. By default, there is no edit link just for the lead section, but registered users can get it by enabling one or both of the followingpreferences (both require JavaScript):
Add an [edit] link for the lead section of a pageEnable section editing by right clicking on section titlesWikipedia lead sections are not written innews style. Although there are some similarities, such as putting the most important information first and making it possible for any reader to understand the subject even if they only read the lead, there are some differences. Thelead paragraph (sometimes spelled "lede")[Q] of newspaper journalism is a compressed summary of only the most important facts about a story. These basic facts are sometimes referred to as the "five Ws":who,what,when,where, andwhy. Journalistic leads normally are only one or two sentences long. By contrast, in Wikipedia articles, the first sentence is usually a definition, the lead is longer, and it ultimately provides more information, as its purpose is to summarize the article, not just introduce it.
| Journalistic lead | Encyclopedic lead |
|---|---|
| Toxic gas leaking from an American-owned insecticide plant in central India killed at least 410 people overnight, many as they slept, officials said today. At least 12,000 were reported injured in the disaster in the city of Bhopal, 2,000 of whom were hospitalized. —Hazarika, Sanjoy (3 December 1984)"Gas leak in city kills at least 410 in city of Bhopal"The New York Times | TheBhopal disaster, orBhopal gas tragedy, was a 3 December 1984 incident wherein over 500,000 people in the vicinity of theUnion Carbide India Limited pesticide plant inBhopal,Madhya Pradesh,India were exposed to the highlytoxic gasmethyl isocyanate, in what is considered theworld's worst industrial disaster. A government affidavit in 2006 stated that the leak caused 558,125 injuries, including 38,478 temporary partial injuries and approximately 3,900 severely and permanently disabling injuries. Estimates vary on the death toll, with the official number of immediate deaths being 2,259. Others estimate that 8,000 died within two weeks, and another 8,000 or more have since died from gas-related diseases. In 2008, theGovernment of Madhya Pradesh paid compensation to the family members of 3,787 victims killed in the gas release, and to 574,366 injured victims. |
For a list of template messages related to the clean-up of lead sections, seeWikipedia:Template messages/Cleanup § Introduction. Editors are encouraged to improve leads rather than simply tag them.
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not:
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This example not only tells the reader that the subject was a mathematician, it also indicates her field of expertise and work she did outside of it. The years of her birth and death provide time context. The reader who goes no further in this article already knows when she lived, what work she did, and why she is notable. (Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Biographies has more on the specific format for biography articles.)
,Činggis Qaɣan;Chinese:成吉思汗;pinyin:Chéng Jí Sī Hán; probably May 31, 1162[3] – August 25, 1227), bornTemujin (English pronunciation:/təˈmuːdʒɪn/;Mongolian:Тэмүжин,TemüjinIPA:[tʰemutʃiŋ]ⓘ;Middle Mongolian:Temüjin;[4]traditional Chinese:鐵木真;simplified Chinese:铁木真;pinyin:Tiě mù zhēn) and also known by thetemple nameTaizu (Chinese:元太祖;pinyin:Yuán Tàizǔ;Wade–Giles:T'ai-Tsu), was the founder andGreat Khan (emperor) of theMongol Empire, which became thelargest contiguous empire in history after his death.This was later reduced to:
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