Template:Anchor

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The template {{anchor}} inserts one or more invisible anchor names (HTML fragment identifiers) in a page. Anchors are most useful with sections, since links to a section will not work if a section is renamed. However, anchors can be used as needed anywhere in an article.

Basic format

The basic format is {{Anchor|Anchor name}} for parts on a page, and {{subst:Anchor|Anchor name}} for use in headings. More than one name can be given, separated by |, which can be useful for alternative spellings such as "humor" and "humour": {{Anchor|humor|humour}}

If the intended target of an anchor is a section, this template should be substituted in the section header at the start of the line (see § Always substitute inside section headers):

== {{subst:Anchor|Anchor name}} Section title ==

which will be saved in the article as:

== <span class="anchor" id="Anchor name"></span> Section header ==

An anchor name can be arbitrary, but the first letter should generally be capitalized in keeping with header style. See Manual of Style § Section headings for more information. Note that anchor names are case sensitive, so [[#Anchor name]] and [[#Anchor Name]] are not equivalent.

Linking to an anchor

To link to an anchor from within the same page, use [[#Anchor name|display text]]. To link to an anchor from another page, use [[Article name#Anchor name|displayed text]] or {{Section link|Article name|displayed text}}. See Help:Link § Section linking (anchors) for more details.

Note that #Anchor name, used by the MediaWiki software to direct users to sections within a page, is not a wikitext directive like #REDIRECT.

Always substitute inside section headers

If the target of the anchor is a section, the anchor should always be placed inside the section header and always substituted. Not doing so violates MOS:HEADINGS and MOS:SECTIONANCHOR and causes technical complications and accessibility issues. The examples on this documentation page can be tested to see their effect. This is an example of the correct format:

File:Yes check.svg  == {{subst:Anchor|Correctly substituted}} Basic format ==

which will be saved in the article as:

File:Yes check.svg  == <span class="anchor" id="Correctly substituted"></span> Basic format ==

See how the correct placement works by jumping to the § Correctly substituted anchor.

Below are incorrect usages of the template, accompanied by an explanation.

Not above the heading

File:X mark.svg  {{Anchor|Placed above}}
     == Basic format ==

Editors should not place an anchor above a heading, because:

• On mobile, the site expands the wrong section and leaves the intended section collapsed, since the anchor is technically placed inside the previous section.
• It cannot be viewed or changed by editing the section. This is especially important on the mobile interface, as the button to edit the entire article disappears when scrolling, increasing the reliance on a section editing.
• If an editor moves the section it relates to by editing the section directly, the anchor link will not be included and will remain in the old position.
• On talk pages, the anchor remains attached to the previous topic once the topic is archived or moved elsewhere.

See how this incorrect placement works by jumping to the anchor § Placed above.

Not below the heading

     == Basic format ==
File:X mark.svg  {{Anchor|Placed below}}

Editors should not place an anchor underneath a heading, because browsers will hide the section title from view when jumping to the target. This is also inaccessible to users of screen readers, see § Not after the section title below.

See how this incorrect placement works by jumping to the anchor § Placed below.

Not transcluded

File:X mark.svg  == {{Anchor|Transcluded anchor}} Basic format ==

Editors should not transclude an {{Anchor}} inside a heading, because:

• The template call will appear in the edit summary each time the section is edited, like this: /* {{Anchor|Transcluded anchor}} Basic format */.
• In watchlists and history pages, the clickable link to the section will fail to bring the user to the correct section, unless the template call is manually removed before the edit is published.
• After editors save an edit to a section, they are taken to the top of the page instead of to the section they just edited.

See how an unsubstituted anchor works by editing the section § Transcluded anchor and saving your edit.

Not after the section title

File:X mark.svg  == Basic format {{subst:Anchor|Placed after title}} ==

Editors should not place a substituted {{subst:Anchor}} after the heading, or even within the heading but after the section title. Users of screen readers rely on anchors to be at the point from which reading should commence; if the anchor is inserted after the section title, the screen reader software will not read out the title and will instead begin with the paragraphs that follow it.

See how this incorrect placement works by jumping to the anchor § Placed after title.

Limitations

HTML entity references for characters unsuitable in anchors

Ch	Code	Template	Magic word	Meaning
"	" "	—N/a	—N/a	(double) quotation mark
#	# #	{{hash}}	—N/a	hash
|	| &vertbar;	{{pipe}}	{{!}}	pipe
=	= =	—N/a	{{=}}	equals

Anchor names that contain any character shown in the table will not work as expected. However, any of these characters can be replaced with the HTML character entity reference "&#" codes shown, and the pipe symbol and equals sign can be worked around with {{!}} and {{=}}, respectively. Markup such as <sup> and <sub> (superscript and subscript) cannot be used. Most other characters, such as whitespace and punctuation, are not a problem.

Anchor names must be unique on a page and must not duplicate any heading titles. Duplicate anchors will not work as expected since the #location links go to the first anchor with that name. Duplicate anchors result in invalid HTML; you can check for duplicate anchors by running the page through the W3C Markup Validation Service.

Anchor links are case-sensitive in some browsers, so treat all anchor links as case-sensitive when creating links to them. For example, if you create the anchor with === {{subst:Anchor|Bar}} Foo ===, link to it with [[Foo#Bar]], not [[Foo#bAR]]. However, because some browsers are not case-sensitive, do not create section titles or anchors that differ only in case from others on the page. That is, do not create both === {{subst:Anchor|Bar}} Foo === and === {{subst:Anchor|bAR}} Foo ===, as they would be considered duplicates and would trigger the second error in this list.

Use in tables

Anchors may be used within tables, subject to certain restrictions. The {{Anchor}} template may be used in the caption and cells of a table, but not those portions of a table that are outside the caption and cells. Unlike in section headings, the template does not have to be substituted. It is used on the table's caption thus:

File:Green check.svg

|+ {{Anchor|FooX}} A table caption

and the following forms of cell are valid:

File:Green check.svg

! {{Anchor|Foo1}} A header cell
! style="background:white;" |{{Anchor|Foo2}} A header cell with styling
|{{Anchor|Foo3}} A data cell
| rowspan="2" |{{Anchor|Foo4}} A data cell spanning two rows

You need to ensure that the {{Anchor}} is not in that portion of the markup intended for the classes, styles etc. Thus, {{Anchor}} cannot be placed anywhere on lines that begin with {| (start of table) or |- (new row), and the following forms of cell are not valid:

File:Red x.svg

! {{Anchor|Foo1}} | A header cell
! style="background: white;" {{Anchor|Foo2}} | A header cell with styling
| {{Anchor|Foo3}} | A data cell
| rowspan="2" {{Anchor|Foo4}} | A data cell spanning two rows

If it is necessary for an anchor to be in any of these positions, a different technique is used—the id= attribute. This is placed in that portion of the markup where the classes, styles etc. may be used, as follows:

{| id="FooX" class="wikitable"
|- id="FooY"
! id="Foo1" | A header cell
! style="background: white;" id="Foo2" | A header cell with styling
| id="Foo3" | A data cell
| rowspan="2" id="Foo4" | A data cell spanning two rows

The id= attribute may appear before, between or after any other attributes that may be present, but only one id= attribute may be used in each of these areas.

If {{anchor}} is placed at the start of a vertically centered cell (which is the default for tables) then links to the anchor will jump to the start of the displayed content and not the top of the cell. This may require the reader to scroll up to fully see other cells in the row. It can be avoided by instead placing id= where the row code starts.

Explanations and examples

Example 1

{{anchor|Foo}}
could be linked to with [[#Foo|...]] from within the same article (let's call this article "Qux"),
or it could be linked to with [[Qux#Foo|...]] from other articles and from redirects (where the ellipsis after the word "Foo" here means the words chosen to represent that link in the Wikipedia article, which, of course, could be anything).

Example 2

Anchors can be more suitable for inter-article linking than section titles are, because anchors are more stable. For example a section title == Foo == within a Wikipedia article titled Qux:
== {{subst:anchor|Foo bar}} Foo ==
Here, links via [[Qux#Foo bar]] would remain valid even if the section were renamed: == <span class="anchor" id="Foo bar"></span> On foo and its many friends ==

Example 3

Say you wrote an article about a recently discovered Indo-European language called "Yish Yash". The title of your article would probably be "Yish Yash language" (if there were already an article titled "Yish Yash" that covered the culture generally). Now let's say that within your article you wished to have a section titled "The placement of the tongue when producing Yish Yash vowel sounds". You would create a section heading that looked like this:
== The placement of the tongue when producing Yish Yash vowel sounds ==
Let's say that you then finished up writing and saved the new article. Now, say you came across another article on Wikipedia titled "Proto-Indo-European vowels" which happened to have a section on the unique tongue placement used in Yish Yash. You decided it might be useful here for readers to be able to quickly access the section of your article on Yish Yash tongue placement when forming vowels; however, you don't want to send them to the beginning of the whole article on the Yish Yash language (you wanted to target them more specifically). So you create a link in the Proto-Indo European vowel article to the section within your article on the placement of the tongue in Yish Yash: you might do so by editing the text of the Proto-Indo-European vowel article and adding something like this to a relevant place within it:
[[Yish Yash language#The placement of the tongue when producing Yish Yash vowel sounds|Yish Yash tongue placement]] is particularly interesting.
That is some really long code, but it would create a direct link to the relevant section of the new Yish Yash language article and would look like this in the article on Proto-Indo-European vowels:
"...Yish Yash tongue placement is particularly interesting..."
Now let's say another editor came along and wished to change the heading of this section of your article for some legitimate reason—perhaps to "Yish Yash vowels and the tongue". They could do so by editing your article and making the section heading look like this:
== Yish Yash vowels and the tongue ==
Unbeknownst to that editor, this would mean the link in the article on Proto-Indo-European vowels that you created earlier would now go by default to the top of the Yish Yash article instead of your carefully-chosen subsection! However, if an anchor were placed within the section heading of the Yish Yash article either when you created it or when the other editor came along and changed it—perhaps something like this:
== {{subst:Anchor|Tongue}} The placement of the tongue when producing Yish Yash vowel sounds ==
or like this:
== {{subst:Anchor|Tongue}} Yish Yash vowel–tongue interaction ==
and the text of the article on Proto-Indo-European vowels had been changed by you to something like this:
[[Yish Yash language#Tongue|Yish Yash tongue placement]] is particularly interesting.
then the link from the Proto-Indo-European article would continue to point to the relevant section of the Yish Yash article, even if the wording of the section heading there had changed completely and without the reader having to sort it out for themselves. The use of anchors can make for a cleaner, more efficient Wikipedia reading experience where section headings are changed—which they not infrequently are.

TemplateData

This is the TemplateData for this template used by TemplateWizard, VisualEditor and other tools. See a monthly parameter usage report for Template:Anchor in articles based on its TemplateData.

TemplateData for Anchor

Add HTML anchors to a page. Make a link to your anchor with [[#Anchor on same page]] or [[Page you're linking to#Anchor on that page]]. Every anchor on a page must be different. Do not use the characters " or # or | or =.

Template parameters

This template prefers inline formatting of parameters.

Parameter		Description	Type	Status
First anchor	1	Name of the anchor Example Marriage	String	required
Second anchor	2	Name of the anchor	String	optional
Third anchor	3	Name of the anchor	String	optional
Fourth anchor	4	Name of the anchor	String	optional
Fifth anchor	5	Name of the anchor	String	optional
Sixth anchor	6	Name of the anchor	String	optional
Seventh anchor	7	Name of the anchor	String	optional
Eighth anchor	8	Name of the anchor	String	optional
Ninth anchor	9	Name of the anchor	String	optional
Tenth anchor	10	Name of the anchor	String	optional

See also

Shortcut templates

Template	Shortcut	Result
{{Shortcut}}	{{Sh}}
{{Shortcut compact}}	{{Hsh}}
{{Shortcut mini}}	{{Msh}}	WP:THISWP:THIS 📌
{{Template shortcut}}	{{Tsh}}
{{Template redirect}}	{{Tlr}}
{{Short URL box}}	{{Urlb}}
{{Shortcut-style further links}}	{{Msh}}

• {{Anchor}} – Creates an HTML anchor that can be linked to
• {{Visible anchor}} – Highlights the linked text, like this.
• {{Section link}} – Link to an anchor or section
• {{R for convenience}} – For placement on the redirect page
  • {{R from shortcut}} – For shortcut boxes
  • {{R to redirect template}} – For template redirects
• {{Anchor comment}}
• {{Anchored list}}

The above documentation is transcluded from Template:Anchor/doc. (edit | history)
Editors can experiment in this template's sandbox (create | mirror) and testcases (create) pages.
Add categories to the /doc subpage. Subpages of this template.