Help:Whitespace: Difference between revisions

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Latest revision as of 08:33, 24 July 2025

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{{about|the appearance of blank space on an article|the Manual of Style section on using line breaks in an article|MOS:LINEBREAKS}}

[[File:WhiteSpace.jpg|right|thumb|350px|TheThis Wikipedia article shown here is a stub. It has a minimal amount of body text along with an infobox on the right and a navbox at the bottom. The remainder of the page is blank, known as whitespace.]]

{{shortcut|WP:WHITE}}

'''Whitespace''' isrefers to any [[Blank space (punctuation)|blank space]] that appears on the published version of a Wikipedia page inacross anyall namespace.[[Wikipedia:Namespaces|namespaces]] Itthat is notfree occupiedof by any[[special characters]], [[Wikipedia:Templates|templates]], multimedia[[Wikipedia:Multimedia|media]], or anythingother [[HTML elseelements]]. In other words, it appears as empty, ''white.'' space.

Whitespace is not always desirable. It can give the page an untidy appearance and make the article look altogether incomplete. But it cannot always be avoided, and there are times, when itused maysparingly, actuallywhitespace comecan inenhance handyreadability whenand visual balance, helping readers to better navigate and absorb the addedcontent inon smallthe amountspage.

==Causes of whitespace==

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It is also possible to produce your own table of contents as follows:<br />

----

<syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext">

<pre><nowiki>

{| id="toc" class="toc" summary="Contents"

! {{MediaWiki:Toc}}

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__NOTOC__

|}

</syntaxhighlight>

</nowiki></pre>

----

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===Invisible comments===

[[Help:Hidden text|Comments]] in the wikicode added by <ttcode><nowiki><&lt;!-- Comment --></nowiki></ttcode> can contribute to whitespace. Format the comment to avoid this, by ensuring either that the initial <code>&lt;</code> touches the text immediately beforehand, or that the final <code>&gt;</code> touches the text immediately afterwards:

... the end of a paragraph.

&nbsp;

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== Caveats ==

Avoid "fixing" white space issues which are peculiar to your combination of screen/, window, and font sizes, your choice of browser, your image settings, and so on. Check with other settings or systems, or ask other editors to docheck sothem for you.

Avoid "fixes" which break the appearance of the page on mobile devices. Again, other editors can advise you, if you do not have a suitable device on which to check, other editors can advise you.

==See also==