Template:Header

by Walter Scott

Template documentation

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This template can be preloaded via the Gadgets, alternatively, one can preload Template:Header/preload.

{{header
 | title       = 
 | author      = 
 | translator  = 
 | section     = 
 | previous    = 
 | next        = 
 | year        = 
 | notes       = 
}}

This template is meant to be used at the top of a work^{[notes 1]} in the main namespace and its subsections. Fill in any relevant information, and leave unknown or inapplicable parameters empty. For easy use, see also the header preloading script gadget in your preferences.

Documentation

Parameters

Standard

• title = title of the work, for subpage use relative links (mandatory)
• author = name of author (automatically wikilinks)
  • use author-display to change how author displays
  • where control of linking is required use author-nolink, and leave the field empty
• section = name of subdivision of work, usually used on subpages, typically text without additional formatting
• previous = name of previous part of work; relative links on subpages, full links otherwise
• next = name of next part of work, relative links on subpages, full links otherwise
• notes = notes to explain the work, to add context, or to impart concise information that adds value to the reader; for example, use of {{listen}}

Optional

• Parameters modifying author
  • author-display, used to change how author displays.

    By default, | author = Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill will produce the link Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, and | author = Winston Churchill (1871-1947) will produce the link Winston Churchill, but | author = Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill | author-display = Winston Churchill will produce the link Winston Churchill.

  • Template:Anchor , which disables automatic linking of the author parameter if true.

    | author = the [[Portal:United States Congress|United States Congress]] | author-nolink = true will display the author as "the United States Congress".

  • section-author = name of the author of this section, if not the same as author the overall work; or synonym contributor.
  • author2, author2-display, section-author2, section-author2-display, etc. for additional authors. For example, | author1 = Winston Churchill (1871-1947) | author2 = Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill | author2-display = Winston Churchill will display as "Winston Churchill and Winston Churchill".
  • override-author = legacy parameter for unusual cases. When using this, please leave the author field empty.
• All attribution parameters have the same behavior as author w.r.t. -display, -nolink, section- and additional values.

• year = year of publication, adds work to the category for the year, see Category:Works by year.

  Enter "?" for a work with no known publication year, and leave blank if you simply don't have this information.

  Do not use AD or CE for any Anno Domini/Current Era works (year 1 to the present). Use BCE (do not use BC) for all years before year 1; leave a space between the number and the letters (e.g. 150 BCE).

  Approximate dates can be entered in one of the following ways:

  1. Decades, centuries or periods can be used instead of a year (e.g. 1060s, 11th century or Medieval).
  2. To use a year in the circa format, enter it as "c/Y" (e.g. c/1066 or c/150 BCE). (The use of "ca" or "circa" instead of "c" will also be recognised.) This will display as, for example, "c. 1066".
  3. To use a approximate choice of two years, enter it as "Y/Y" (e.g. 1066/1067). This will display as it is written.

  The behaviour of this parameter can be further modified by:

  • noyear = will prevent the year being displayed in the header but will still add the work to the category for the year. For use in cases where the year is already included in the title of the work. Any use of this parameter, even without text, will work. Example: | noyear = yes. All pages with this parameter will be added to Category:Pages with noyear for tracking its usage.
  • noyearcat = will display the year but in the header but will not add the work to the category for the year. For use in cases where a specific subcategory exists for the type of work to avoid flooding the main category for the year. As above, any use of the parameter will trigger this action. Pages will be added to the tracking category Category:Pages with noyearcat.

• edition = yes to refer to further information on the work's talk page.
• shortcut = The shortcut to this page, if it exists. This is normally reserved for very large reference works (e.g. EB11)
• cover = The image used as a cover for the book when exported. Do not include the "File:" prefix, e.g. Foobar.jpg. You can use a page of a multi-page file using Foobar.djvu/7.
• sortkey, defaultsort: For sorting purposes the template will move the articles "a", "an" and "the" to the end of the title, on the root page and all its subpages; for example, The Times/1854/News/The Charge of the Light Brigade will be sorted as "Times, The/1854/News/Charge of the Light Brigade, The". To override this, set sortkey to the desired sort key, e.g. sortkey = Charge of the Light Brigade, The.
• See Sister, related author, and portal wiki links
  • portal
  • related-author
• Sister wiki links are now typically now provided through Wikidata linking, which manages link rot issues. So while the parameters are shown here for fullness of scope, such usage would be used to override automated linking rather than as a primary use.

{{header
 | title          = 
 | author         = 
 | author-display = 
 | section        = 
 | previous       = 
 | next           = 
 | notes          = 
<!-- optional from here -->
 | year                = 
 | edition             =
 | translator          = 
 | translator-display  = 
 | related-author      = 
 | portal              = 
 | contributor         =
 | editor              =
 | cover               = 
 | shortcut            =
<!-- modifying "year" behaviour; use one of -->
 | noyear              = 
 | noyearcat           =
<!-- modifying sorting behaviour -->
 | sortkey = 
<!-- provided through wikidata, can be used to override wikidata -->
 | wikipedia    = 
 | commons      = 
 | commonscat   = 
 | wikiquote    = 
 | wikinews     = 
 | wiktionary   = 
 | wikibooks    = 
 | wikiversity  = 
 | wikispecies  = 
 | wikivoyage   = 
 | meta         = 
}}

Relative links

With lengthy, multi-page works, using relative links is highly recommended. This shortens the code and ensures that a work remains linked together even if it is moved or reorganised. The three formats are [[/subpage]] (subpage), [[../]] (parent), and [[../sibling]] (sibling)^[1]; see the example usage below. Note that [[../]] will expand to the title of the parent page, which is ideal if the work is renamed at a later time.

This depends on a page conforming to the page title standards in the Style guide, with works in the form [[Work title]] and [[Work title/Subpage]].

1. The specific form [[../sibling/]] can be used on a sibling to provide both a relative link, and the link label to a sibling page.

Chapter titles

In general, include chapter titles in the "section" field, but avoid including them in the "previous" and "next" fields. For example:

Example

{{header
 | title       = [[../|The Book of Scottish Song]]
 | author      = 
 | editor      = Alexander Whitelaw
 | translator  = 
 | section     = Jock o' Hazeldean
 | contributor = Walter Scott
 | previous    = [[../Sing on, sing on/]]
 | next        = [[../The Laird o' Cockpen/]]
 | year        = 1843
 | notes       = 
}}

Usage examples

Normal

Example

{{header
 | title    = [[../]]
 | author   = Lewis Carroll
 | section  = Chapter 3: A Caucus-Race and a Long Tale
 | previous = [[../Chapter 2/]]
 | next     = [[../Chapter 4/]]
 | notes    =
}}

No author link

Example

{{header
 | title    = Peerage Act 1963
 | author   = the [[Portal:Parliament of the United Kingdom|Parliament of the United Kingdom]] | author-nolink = true
 | section  =
 | previous =
 | next     = 
 | year     = 1963 | noyear = true
 | notes    =
}}

Translation

Example

{{header
 | title    = Fables
 | author   = Jean de La Fontaine
 | translator = Elizur Wright
 | section  =
 | previous =
 | next     =
 | notes    =
}}

Example

{{header
 | title    = Pantagruel
 | author   = François Rabelais
 | translator1 = Thomas Urquhart
 | translator2 = Peter Antony Motteux
 | section-translator = unknown
 | section  = Example
 | previous =
 | next     =
 | notes    =
}}

Categories

 | categories = 1st category / 2nd category

Note: that use of this methodology excludes further editing by use of the HotCat tool, so this form should only be used where the categories are unlikely to need to be altered

Sister, related author, and portal wiki links

You can link to Wikisource portals and other WMF projects using the optional wiki links parameters where required to override the data provided from Wikidata. These are:

• portal, related-author
• wikipedia, wikispecies, commons, commonscat, wikiquote are typically applied from Wikidata data through interwiki links, or through linking of Template:Property so should only be used to override the default
• wikinews, wiktionary, wikibooks, wikiversity, meta

For portal this would generally be added to the root page of a work, rather than added repeatedly for each subpage. Usage on a subpage would be useful where the subpage alone has a relationship with the specified portal, whereas the parent work does not have that relationship.

These links are generated using {{plain sister}}

Example

{{header
 | title    = Kinematics of Machinery
 | author   = Franz Reuleaux
 | section  =
 | previous =
 | next     =
 | notes    =
 | portal  = Technology/Germany
 | wikipedia = Kinematics of Machinery
 | related-author = Albert Einstein
}}

List

• wikipedia
• commons
• commonscat
• wikiquote
• wikinews
• wiktionary
• wikibooks
• wikiversity
• wikispecies
• wikivoyage
• wikidata
• meta

Shortcuts

If a work has a shortcut, you can add it using the shortcut field. This should be in accordance with the shortcut guidelines, and shortcuts should not be used for every work.

Example

{{header
 | title    = 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica
 | author   = 
 | section  =
 | previous =
 | next     =
 | notes    =
 | shortcut = [[EB1911]]
}}

Advanced manipulation

Alternative headers

1. Certain projects have customised versions of {{header}} that are used to present these works, eg. {{DNB00}} is used for the project involved with Dictionary of National Biography. For these works it is permissible and recommended that these variations are used. New alternatives to {{header}} should be discussed on the talk page, and consequentially listed on each project's pages.

JavaScript extraction

The header values can be extracted using JavaScript by accessing the text values of their span wrappers:

value	wrapper id
title	header-title-text
author	header-author-text
translator	header-translator-text
previous	headerprevious
next	headernext
notes	none

Microformat

The HTML markup produced by this template includes an hCard microformat, which makes the person's details parsable by computers, either acting automatically to catalogue articles across Wikipedia or via a browser tool operated by a reader, to (for example) add the subject to an address book or database. For more information about the use of microformats on Wikimedia projects, please see Wikipedia's microformat project.

Sub-templates

To include a URL, use {{URL}}.

Please do not remove instances of these sub-templates.

Classes

hCard uses HTML classes including:

• adr
• agent
• bday
• birthplace
• category
• country-name
• deathdate
• deathplace
• extended-address
• family-name
• fn (required)
• given-name
• honorific-prefix
• honorific-suffix
• label
• locality
• n
• nickname
• note
• org
• role
• url
• vcard

Please do not rename or remove these classes; nor collapse nested elements which use them.

Technical

This template delegates some logic to Lua modules and uses sub templates to divide up the structural code:

• Module:Header the main logic for parameter handling

Tracking categories

This template currently uses the following categories to track maintenance tasks, errors, and feature usage.

• Category:Works with non-existent author pages
• Category:Pages with override author
• Category:Pages with contributor
• Category:Pages with override contributor
• Category:Anonymous texts
• Category:Works with unknown editors
• Category:Works with unmentioned editors
• Category:Translations without translator information specified
• Category:Wikisource translations
• Category:Mainspace pages with shortcuts/Category:Translation namespace pages with shortcuts
• Category:Pages with noyear
• Category:Pages with noyearcat
• Category:Pages with explicit formatting in header fields
• Category:Pages with an export cover
• Category:Headers applying DefaultSort key
• Category:Headers with DefaultSort equal to page title
• Category:Headers with numerical arguments

See also

• MediaWiki:Proofreadpage header template for the auto-generated header available with <pages header=1/>
• {{textinfo}} for recording information on work's talk page
• {{translation header}} for template header used in Translation: namespace
• {{author}} for template header used in Author: namespace
• {{process header}} for template header used in Wikisource: namespace
• {{portal header}} for template header used in Portal: namespace
• {{RunningHeader}} for the headers to be used in source texts
• Derived templates leveraging Template:Header

Templates called by this template:

• {{plain sister}}
• {{shortcut}}

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