Content

• Steps
• Part 1 of 2: Article Writing Basics
• Part 2 of 2: Advanced Managed / Advanced Editor
• Tips
• Warnings

Do you know how to do something that will benefit others? You can share your knowledge and talent by writing an article on wikiHow. You can even polish it up to make it featured in Featured Articles! It's easy to get started.

• If you have never set up your Preferences on wikiHow, the default settings are available through the Article Creation Tool section, which does not require special wiki text to write an article. However, you can still customize your Preferences if you wish, disable the use of the article creation tool, and instead create articles using the Guided Editor or Advanced Editor.

Steps

Part 1 of 2: Article Writing Basics

1. 1 Check out the Writer’s Guide, Editing Basics, Tour, and How to Write a How To ... article.
2. 2 Look for duplicates first, as wikiHow is constantly changing.
   • Duplicates will eventually all be merged or removed.
   • If the title you came up with already exists, simply supplement the existing article.
3. 3 Click on Write an Article in the upper right corner of any page.
4. 4 Select a title.
   • Include the "most accurate, most common search terms" to reflect the "special or specific technique" described in your article.
   • The word "How" is added automatically.
   • The headline must begin with a verb (for example, "How to walk a dog").
   • Read how capital letters are used in the title of an article for details before you submit it, or study the Title Rules first.
   • You can request a title change if you make a mistake, but it's best to try to choose one that stays from the beginning.
5. 5 Write an introduction.
   • Briefly describe the content of your article.
   • Include the purpose of the article to inform the reader right away.
   • If you wish, include a question in the introduction to grab the reader's interest. For example: "Have you ever wondered how to write an engaging introduction?"
6. 6 Determine the steps for your article.
   • Make a plan for the task you want to describe and describe the steps in the order in which they should be performed.
   • Use the # sign in place of the number at the beginning of each step (numbering is automatic). Using the # * character combination creates paragraphs under an asterisk within a numbered step.
   • The information must be accurate. Study your task before writing the steps.This should improve the accuracy of what you have written and the methods that you have recommended; but don't just copy other people's work!
   • Keep in mind how to properly format the article. Make each step action-oriented.
   • Limit each step to one main idea. Keep your sentences short and simple. Be specific as well as specific and descriptive. Provide further clarification if required.
7. 7 Add other sections as needed. By default, the New Article feature includes the Tips, Warnings, and Sources and Links sections. After publishing, if you are using a managed / advanced editor, you can optionally include the Composition and What You Need sections as well. For more information on creating sections, see How to Style a WikiHow Article, or let a guided editor add the sections for you.
   • If you are using the managed or rich editor, create bulleted paragraphs in these sections, separating them with *.

Part 2 of 2: Advanced Managed / Advanced Editor

• Some advanced editing features are not available by default through the Article Creation Tool. However, you can customize them by changing your Preferences to a guided or rich editor, clicking Switch to rich editor at the top of the page, or by publishing your first draft, and then clicking edit again to make further changes.

1. 1 Define a category for your article. This makes it easier to find and keeps related articles together.
   • Click on "Edit Category".
   • Select a category from the list or use the search bar.
   • Click on "Add" and then "Update Categories" to assign a category.
2. 2 You can add images and videos if you like. This will improve your article and is very necessary for craft articles or recipes.
   • You can import free photos or upload your own for further instructions.
3. 3 Click on View at the bottom of the page to see your changes.
   • Edit, edit, edit your article by checking spelling, capital letters, punctuation, and so on. Imagine that you are a Russian language teacher. How would you rate her?
4. 4 Save the draft if you like. Click the green Save Draft button at the very bottom of the Guided or Advanced Editor if you want to save the current draft version. This will allow you to continue working on the article for longer if you are not ready to publish it yet. To find it again, select “My Drafts” from the “My Profile” drop-down menu in the upper right corner, which appears when you are logged into wikiHow with your name.
   • If you are unsure if an article is ready for publication, you can view the most recent version in your profile draft list and complete it later without publishing.
   • If you have a wikiHow account and are logged in with your own name, you can access the article from your profile fairly easily, as there will be a list of links to articles you started, as well as the Thumbs Up Edits pages. rated by you).
5. 5 Make a note in the introduction to editing, at the bottom of the article, to explain your editing.
6. 6 Click on the green Publish button at the bottom of the article. Your article will be saved and made available to the general public for reading.
   • You can edit it a little later by following the link on your Profile page if you created your account, under the Started Articles list if you clicked Publish.

Tips

• If you would like to receive email notifications when an article has been modified by someone else, please check the box next to "Observe." Thus, you need to have a user page with your email address in order to receive notifications, and log in to wikiHow using your name.
• Remember the exact title of your article, if you decide not to log into or have an account on wikiHow, then you can find it using the search bar at the top of every wikiHow page in case you want to view or edit it later without having your own account.
• You can also look at the additional syntax page for cases where the article contains different methods to achieve the same result, or when you really need to add something that does not conform to the page standard. But use this information very rarely.
• Don't worry if your writing is far from perfect. It's OK. Other authors will help you improve your work (and you can edit them more if something happens to them). Just do your best and have fun!
  • Don't be offended by others' editing.
  • Consider it freely. People are trying, and we hope, on the whole successfully, to create a resource that is useful for society. You can put your best thoughts into a pretty good article, make them quickly available, and keep doing something else interesting. Feel free to come back to the article when you have something else to add or feel you could improve on - and also feel free to let others improve it over time.
• Use the examples in your article. Be very precise and include a lot of detail, but don't go overboard with the explanation.
  • Deviate a little in favor of an over-explanation. It will be much easier for someone to go quickly through a part of your article or the community to delete something very long than it will be confusing for someone how to figure it out in order to save the project. If you think that a young person - or, if you are writing an article for children, a young child - who is not particularly sophisticated would figure out how to follow the step you described, then you probably wrote well enough. Take extra care to prevent confusion that could endanger or ruin the project.
• Save the article as a draft often so you don't lose it.
• Try to come up with an idea for an article that no one else has thought of before. Try to go above and beyond. Try to keep creative thinking in full swing!
• Consider the principles of "modular programming" to decide if your idea will be reflected in a single article, part of an article, or multiple articles.
  • One article should describe several steps, which are usually carried out only as a whole.
  • Articles about simple basic tasks, such as an article on sprouting seeds, may be linked to various articles with variations on the topic, such as special techniques for sprouting pumpkin seeds.
  • Articles on large-scale tasks like growing pumpkin may contain links to sub-tasks like growing pumpkin seeds (selectively following the simplest overviews, so those in the know should follow the links) and storing vegetables, and additional steps. such as the need for pumpkin fertilization.
  • Modular programming lowers the learning curve on wikiHow, making articles easier to understand and improve with confidence. It increases the versatility of wikiHow by reducing the amount of new material for new applications. It enhances wikiHow's usability by releasing each improvement into a discrete process across all projects to which it applies. And it enhances the usability of wikiHow by quickly directing users to one or more articles that have relevant information. Since wikiHow is free, unlike many other links, it is unlikely that contributors and users' efforts will be wasted in the degenerating counterparts of the tediously browsing bookcase or database, mostly repetitive, inconsistently organized, sometimes oversimplified and very expensive. volumes.
    
    The easiest way to define the intent is more or less enough to start, but the article can be split into several new articles, several contents of old articles can be combined into one new one. Be cocky on wikiHow, but not too much: especially if the article has already been viewed and edited a lot, major structural changes are triggered due to its talk page (which can be automatically watched by enthusiasts), first wait a few days.
  • The special “merge” rule on the wiki applies to pages with the same titles, such as “Become a Popular Girl” or “Be a Popular Girl — It Works!” And not just similar content. The content is merged and one page is replaced with a redirect to the article with the best, usually simplest, title. If there are two pages with substantially different titles on how to do the same thing, it would be better to combine the text under the most appropriate title and leave a note on the edit summary or talk page about who created the old page.
• Get in the habit of learning new things. Soon you will intuitively find all kinds of links you can share and use to make wikiHow tutorials even easier and better!
• Learn how to:
  • Reply to the requested topic.
  • Perform technical editing (correction) of errors.
  • Add links and related articles to wikiHow for additional reference.
  • Investigate facts and methods and list sources.
  • Obtain permission to legally import copyrighted content.
  • Use templates to improve the quality of your articles.
• It is a good idea to review the deletion policy first before you do so to make sure the article is not deleted.

Warnings

• Be careful: if you are new to wikiHow and are planning to write an article, then most likely someone has already described your idea.
• When writing long articles, there is a tendency for the editor to lose the text of the article, even if you clicked "Save Draft". Always save your work, especially in cases of long articles, it will take a long time to recreate. Or, just to be sure, print a paper copy of the article, create in another editor program (with wiki-formatting), and publish the article.