A short description is a concise explanation of the scope of the page. We use descriptions in search suggestion, below each article title, and possibly by any community tools that uses our API.
Criteria
Here's a few brief rules:
- Be as brief as possible, preferably less than 40 characters.
- Focus on distinguishing the subject from similar ones rather than precisely defining it.
- Should be easy to read as it will be the first point of contact for many readers.
- Most important identifying information should be placed first.
- Should not be a full sentence unless absolutely necessary.
- Should be written as though it follows the title.
- Avoid duplicating information already in the title.
- No wikilinks, plain text only.
- Is not required to provide an adequate definition of the article subject.
- WikiProjects may find it useful to suggest standard formats which may be applicable to categories of articles.
- Avoid anything that is, or could reasonably be construed as, controversial or judgemental. Use universally accepted facts wherever possible.
- Use sentence case, starting with a capital letter. It is technically problematic to have to convert case when there may be proper nouns in the text.
For reference, please check WP:Short description on Wikipedia.
Editing
Short description is easy to add and edit. Simply put a {{Short description}} template on the bottom of the page above the SEO template if it does not exist already. Note that some infobox templates generate a default short description, putting a short description template will override the generated one.
See also
- Wikipedia:Short description on Wikipedia