Editing Help:Link (section)

== Using links ==

In general, the first time a name (of a character, army, vehicle, or whatever) gets used in an article, it should link to that entity's page (though section headers should not include links, for the purposes of accessibility and consistency of formatting), especially if it's relevant to the topic of the article.  Feel free to link to that term if it occurs later in the page, but don't overdo it.  Links should be specific and make sense in context.  Using piped links or redirects is acceptable if the linked article's title does not fit exactly in the linking article's text, but links should not "surprise" the reader.

For example, if we are beginning the [[Imperial Fists]] article with "The '''Imperial Fists''' are a Space Marine Chapter," it is reasonable to want to link to both Space Marines (which the Imperial Fists are) and Space Marine Chapter (to explain the structure of the Chapter), but if we were to accomplish this by linking "Space Marine" to "Space Marines" and "Chapter" to "Space Marine Chapter", that would look like this: "The '''Imperial Fists''' are a [[Space Marines|Space Marine]] [[Space Marine Chapter|Chapter]]."  Notice that the words "Space Marine Chapter" are all adjacent and all linked, which makes it seem like all three words are part of the same link.  A user would be surprised to find that, in fact, the first two words are part of one link and the third word links somewhere else.  It would be better to write this as "The '''Imperial Fists''' are a [[Space Marine Chapter|Chapter]] of [[Space Marines]]," where the two links are clearly separated.

Other "surprising" uses of links include long sentences with adjacent words or word pairs linked to different pages and "easter egg" links (e.g. <nowiki>[[FATAL|The worst role-playing game of all time]]</nowiki>).  While these may be entertaining in moderation to some, they quickly become difficult to read and more frustrating than useful.

=== Checking links ===

Make sure to use the "Show preview" button (between "'''Save page'''" and "Show changes" at the bottom of the page) to check that all of your internal links resolve.  If you see any redlinks, either the article does not exist (if you think the article should exist, leave the link where it is and it may get created) or the article name has been misspelled.  This can be the result of mixing up the case (e.g. "Space marine" is different from "Space Marine"), plural/singular (articles should generally have singular titles, categories should generally be plural -- if you need to spell out a term in plural while the article title is singular, use a piped link or tack on the -s or -es as in the "Troll(s)" example above), or a typo.