Wikipedia:Simple guide to creating your first article

You can follow these simple steps to create your first article. Butt first, please check whether the article already exists under another title. (If it does then you should create a redirect from your title to the existing title.)

1. Copy and paste all the text inside the below box into your sandbox as a starting point—as long as you're logged in with an account. You might need to click "Edit source" once at your sandbox to open the page for editing.

'''Your topic''' and then define it in the first sentence if you can.<ref>Add a reliable source people can find to verify your info here.</ref> Say something important about the topic.<ref>Add another reference here.</ref><ref>Add even another important looking reference here so people can see this topic is actually important and worthy of Wikipedia's attention.</ref>

==References==
{{reflist}}

[[Your topic]]

2. Remove any potential spaces you have before the beginning of each line and click "Save page." It will appear as it does in the box below.

Your topic and then define it in the first sentence if you can. Say something important about the topic.

References

Your topic

3. Adapt it by adding info, sources, and by replacing "your topic" with the name/title of your new topic.

4. Copy and paste everything except the link at the bottom into the page you want to create for your new topic. To get there, just -

4.a. Click on the red link.

4.b. Paste the content in.

4.c. Add an edit summary like "new article."

4.d. Click "Save page" at the bottom and you're done! (If some text on this page could be improved, then please it, thanks.)

It's really that simple most of the time! Click here for a list of possibly notable uncreated article topics. Click here then on "Ask a question" to ask a question about Wikipedia. Click here to leave a question about or a recommendation for this page.

• A note: You don't have to have three sources, it will just generally protect your article from being deleted if you have more than one. Just make sure you establish notability (keep reading). Once created, find other Wikipedia articles that should naturally link to your article to make sure it is integrated into the site (and not an "orphan"). You can also add a category or three at the bottom of the page with: [[Category:Whatever category it fits into]]. Usually, just copying a couple of categories from the bottom of an article that is a similar topic helps.

• Another note: Your topic should be notable (i.e. it should have some detailed coverage in good references from independent sources). Wikipedia is an encyclopedia—not something else. Please respect copyright law and avoid defamatory content. Feel free to be bold and create the article with a limited knowledge of norms here, but other editors might choose to delete it if it's not seen as belonging.

• Complications: You don't have to make the beginning of your article an exact text match of your title. See electrical characteristics of dynamic loudspeakers, for example. And the title you may type into the search bar might turn out to be a redirect that should be a separate article. If you think it is best for the encyclopedia (see the arguments listed at the previous link on "should be") to turn a redirect like UK into an article, you need to click on the "UK" where it says "(Redirected from . . .)" Then you can paste your content in there after you click "Edit source." In this case, there really isn't a good reason to start an article off the redirect UK.

• Yet another note: Thanks for contributing to Wikipedia, and if you need more detail, see WP:Your first article in more detail, thanks.

See also

• Wikipedia:Contributing to Wikipedia
• Wikipedia:Starting an article