Wiktionary:Entry layout


 * “WT:MOS” redirects here. For the style guide, see Style guide.

This is a list of norms that govern how an entry should be formatted. This includes what sections are allowed and what contents are expected to be found in them. These rules reflect what editors think as best concerning the standard format of an entry.

Flexibility
While the information below may represent some kind of “standard” form, it is not a set of rigid rules. You may experiment with deviations, but other editors may find those deviations unacceptable, and revert those changes. They have just as much right to do that as you have to make them. Be ready to discuss those changes. If you want your way accepted, you have to make the case for that. Unless there is a good reason for deviating, the standard should be presumed correct. Refusing to discuss, or engaging in edit wars may also affect your credibility in other unrelated areas.

A very simple example
This is a simple entry for the word bed, and shows the most fundamental elements of an entry:
 * 1) a word’s language (as a level 2 heading),
 * 2) its part of speech or “type” (as a level 3 heading),
 * 3) the word itself (using the correct headword template),
 * 4) a definition (preceded by “#”, which causes automatic numbering),
 * 5) links in the definition for key words,
 * 6) “References” (as a level 3 heading), and
 * 7) a verifiable place where you found the word.

This example can be copied and used to start an entry or section of an entry.

Noun

 * 1) A piece of furniture to sleep on.

Variations for languages other than English
Entries for terms in other languages should follow the standard format as closely as possible regardless of the language of the word. However, a translation into English should normally be given instead of a definition, including a gloss to indicate which meaning of the English translation is intended. Also, the translations section should be omitted.

For languages written in other scripts (Japanese, Gothic, etc.), we have romanization systems in place. It is required that each romanization entry contain at least one definition line starting with “#” in the wikitext.

Some languages do have characteristics that require variation from the standard format. For links to these variations see Language considerations.

List of headings
There are additional headings which you should include if possible, but if you don’t have the necessary expertise, resources or time, you have no obligation to add them, with the possible exception of “References”. The list below is not an exclusive list; other headings may be essential in some circumstances. An order for these headings is recommended, but variations in that order are also allowable.

A typical entry that uses many of these additional headings could be formatted thus:

Pronunciation

 * Phonetic transcriptions
 * Audio files in any relevant dialects
 * Rhymes
 * Homophones
 * Hyphenation

Noun
Headword line etc.
 * 1) Meaning 1
 * 2) * Quotations
 * 3) Meaning 2
 * 4) * Quotations

Verb
Headword line etc.
 * 1) Meaning 1
 * 2) * Quotations

Noun
Headword line
 * 1) Meaning 1 in English
 * 2) * Quotation in Finnish
 * 3) ** Quotation translated into English
 * 4) Meaning 2 in English
 * 5) * Quotation in Finnish
 * 6) ** Quotation translated into English

Related terms
A key principle in ordering the headings and indentation levels is nesting. The order shown above accomplishes this most of the time. A heading placed at one level includes everything that follows until an equivalent level is encountered. If a word can be a noun and a verb, everything that derives from its being the first chosen part of speech should be put before the second one is started. Nesting is a key principle of Wiktionary's entry layout norms, but it is difficult to describe with only a few words. If you have problems with it, look at existing entries or ask a more experienced editor for help.

Headings before the definitions
In general, headings in this group do not depend on the meaning of the word. They give an environment that leads up to the word and its relation to other words, and allow us to distinguish it from others that may be similar in some respects. Order of headings:


 * Alternative forms
 * Description
 * Glyph origin
 * Etymology
 * Pronunciation (or Production for sign language entries)

Headings after the definitions
These headings generally derive from knowing the meaning of the word. Order of headings:


 * Usage notes
 * Reconstruction notes
 * Inflection, Declension or Conjugation
 * Mutation
 * Quotations (when not given under a particular sense)
 * Alternative forms
 * Alternative reconstructions
 * Synonyms
 * Antonyms
 * Hypernyms
 * Hyponyms
 * Meronyms
 * Holonyms
 * Troponyms
 * Coordinate terms
 * Derived terms
 * Related terms
 * Collocations
 * Descendants
 * Translations
 * Trivia
 * See also
 * References
 * Further reading
 * Anagrams

Entry name
The name of the entry is the term, phrase, symbol, morpheme or other lexical unit being defined.

For languages with two cases of script, the entry name usually begins with a lowercase letter. For example, use for the English noun and verb, not. Words which begin with a capital letter in running text are exceptions. Typical examples include proper nouns, German nouns , and many abbreviations. If someone tries to access the entry with incorrect capitalization, the software will try to redirect to the correct page automatically.

For prefixes, suffixes and other morphemes in most languages, place the character “-” where it links with other words:, , , etc.

Some page titles can’t be created because of restrictions in the software, usually because they contain certain symbols such as # or |, or are too long. The full list of those entries is at Appendix:Unsupported titles. They are named using the descriptive format “Unsupported titles/Number sign”, while using JavaScript to show the correct title like a normal entry.

For names of matched-pair entries such as and * *, see.

For names of sign language entries, see.

Before the first language section
When multiple capitalizations, punctuation, diacritics, ligatures, scripts and combinations with numbers and other symbols exist, such as (as in “frying pan”),  (the Greek god),  (meaning “all-”) and  (Japanese for “bread”), use the template  at the top of the page to cross-link between them:. When there are too many variations, place them in a separate appendix page, in this case Appendix:Variations of "pan".

Language

 * Each entry has one or more L2 (level-two) language sections. For example, the entry has different meanings in English and Spanish, both on the same page.
 * For languages that have multiple names, a single name is chosen that should be used throughout Wiktionary. Typically, this is an English name for the language. See Languages for more information.
 * Priority is given to Translingual: this heading includes terms that remain the same in all languages. This includes taxonomic names, symbols for the chemical elements, and abbreviations for international units of measurement; for example, , and . English comes next, because this is the English Wiktionary. After that come other languages in alphabetical order.
 * Language sections are no longer separated from each other by a horizontal line.

Part of speech
The part of speech (POS) is a descriptor like “Noun” or “Adjective”; they are different types of terms, phrases, symbols, morphemes and other lexical units on Wiktionary. Each entry has one or more POS sections. In each, there is a headword line, followed by the definitions themselves.

Allowed POS headers:


 * Parts of speech: Adjective, Adverb, Ambiposition, Article, Circumposition, Classifier, Conjunction, Contraction, Counter, Determiner, Ideophone, Interjection, Noun, Numeral, Participle, Particle, Postposition, Preposition, Pronoun, Proper noun, Verb
 * Morphemes: Circumfix, Combining form, Infix, Interfix, Prefix, Root, Suffix
 * Symbols and characters: Diacritical mark, Letter, Ligature, Number, Punctuation mark, Syllable, Symbol
 * Phrases: Phrase, Proverb, Prepositional phrase
 * Han characters and language-specific varieties: Han character, Hanzi, Kanji, Hanja
 * Romanization
 * Logogram
 * Determinative

Other headers can be proposed as new additions to the list. The use of nonstandard POS headers may cause an entry to be categorized in a cleanup category for further inspection.

Some POS headers are explicitly disallowed:


 * Abbreviation, Acronym, Initialism
 * “(POS) form”: Verb form, Noun form, etc.
 * “(POS) phrase”: Noun phrase, Verb phrase, etc. (with the exception of Prepositional phrase)
 * “(attribute) (POS)”: Transitive verb, Personal pronoun, etc. (with the exception of Proper noun)
 * “(POS) (number)”: Noun 1, Noun 2, etc.
 * Cardinal number, Ordinal number, Cardinal numeral, Ordinal numeral (note that ordinal numbers like are classified as adjectives but put in Category:English ordinal numbers by a template and fractions like  are nouns, and are added to Category:English fractional numbers by a template)
 * Clitic, Gerund, Idiom

Headword line
The headword line is the line directly below the part of speech header, in which the word is repeated, along with a romanization if applicable. You can use either the generic template or language-specific templates, such as  for English nouns. In some languages, additional information such as genders and inflected forms are found in the headword line.


 * For an overview of templates used, see.
 * For examples in English entries, see.

Definitions
The definitions are in the POS section, below the headword line. The definitions are organized as a numbered list. The numbers are generated by adding the number sign (#) at the start of each definition in the wikitext. The key terms of a definition should be linked to the respective entries.


 * The vote “2006-12/form-of style” is relevant to this section, without specifying text to be amended in this document, so please see it for details.


 * The vote “2010-08/Italicizing use-with-mention” is relevant to this section, without specifying text to be amended in this document, so please see it for details.

For definitions concerning matched-pair entries and their components, see.

Abbreviations
For abbreviations, acronyms and initialisms (such as and ), the definitions usually use templates linking to the expanded forms of the abbreviation. For example, one of the senses in the entry may be a template that displays “Initialism of personal computer.” Do not capitalise words in the expanded form unless that is how the expanded form is usually written. (In the previous example, don’t write “Personal Computer”.) Where the expanded form is an entry that exists (or should exist) in Wiktionary, link to it. Otherwise, if an appropriate Wikipedia article exists, link to it. When the expanded form does not merit either a Wiktionary entry or a Wikipedia article, link it to its component words. You may expand the definition with a gloss if appropriate.

Context labels
A context label identifies a definition which only applies in a restricted context. Such labels indicate, for example, that the following definition occurs in a limited geographic region or temporal period, or is used only by specialists in a particular field and not by the general population. Many context label templates also place an entry into a relevant category, but they must not be used merely for categorization (see category links, below). One or more labels may be placed before the definition:

Details in Context labels.

Example sentences

 * Main article: Example sentences

 Generally, every definition should be accompanied by one or more quotations illustrating that definition. Quotations are supplemented by example sentences, which are devised by Wiktionary editors in order to illustrate definitions. Example sentences should:
 * be grammatically complete sentences, beginning with a capital letter and ending with a period, question mark, or exclamation point.
 * be placed immediately after the applicable numbered definition, and before any quotations associated with that specific definition.
 * be italicized, with the defined term boldfaced.
 * be as brief as possible while still clarifying the sense of the term. (In rare cases, examples consisting of two brief sentences may work best.)
 * be indented using the “ ” command placed at the start of the line.
 * for languages in non-Latin scripts, a transcription is to be given in the line below, with an additional level of indentation: “ ”.
 * for languages other than English, a translation is to be given in the line below (i.e. below the sentence or below the transcription), with an additional level of indentation: “ ”, and with the translation of the defined term boldfaced.
 * not contain wikilinks (the words should be easy enough to understand without additional lookup).

The goal of the example sentences is the following, which is to be kept in mind when making one up:
 * To place the term in a context in which it is likely to appear, addressing level of formality, dialect, etc.
 * To provide notable collocations, particularly those that are not idiomatic.
 * To select scenarios in which the meaning of the example itself is clear.
 * To illustrate the meaning of the term to the extent that a definition is obtuse.
 * To exemplify varying grammatical frames that are well understood, especially those that may not be obvious, for instance relying on collocation with a preposition. 

Alternative forms

 * See also Forms and spellings

Some variations of the same word kept in multiple pages include:


 * regional variations:, ; ,
 * historical variations:, ; ,
 * hyphenization/compounds:, ,
 * style variation: ,
 * uncertain capitalization: ,
 * different scripts:, (Serbo-Croatian for )

Description
The “Description” section is placed in entries for symbols, containing a visual description of the current symbol.

Section contents:
 * 1) The visual description should be as short as possible. Just using the name from the Unicode codepoint should usually be enough for the character description.
 * 2) * The entry ⌛ (Unicode name: ) may be described as “An hourglass.”
 * 3) When the Unicode codepoint name does not tell anything about the character shape, a short shape description may be added in one’s own words.
 * 4) * The entry 🔗 (Unicode name: ) may be described as “Two or three interlocked chain links.”
 * 5) Major rendering variations may be mentioned.
 * 6) * The entry 🏦 (Unicode name: ) may mention: “This is sometimes rendered as a bank emoji, or just the written word ‘bank’.”

Etymology

 * Main article: Etymology

The first header below the language heading is usually the level 3 “Etymology” header. The etymology is given right below the header without indentation. Etymology essentially shows where the word comes from. This may show the forms in other languages that underlie the word. For many modern words it may show who coined the word. If a word is derived from another in the same language by a regular rule, such as formation of an English adverb by adding “ly”, it is not necessary to repeat the complete details of the word’s origin on the page for the derived word.

Sometimes two words with different etymologies belong in the same entry because they are spelled the same (they are homographs). In such a case there will be more than one “Etymology” header, which we number. Hence for a word like lead the basic header skeleton looks like this:

Verb
Note that in the case of multiple etymologies, all subordinate headers need to have their levels increased by 1 in order to comply with the fundamental concept of showing dependence through nesting.

When multiple etymologies are present, we recommend that – whenever possible – they are ordered by descending commonness in the language, so that the most common etymology is at the top. This may differ from the order given in a native monolingual dictionary. We recognize that editors won't always have sufficient information or context to order etymologies that way, so we encourage the application of this guidance on a best-effort basis.

We also recommend that etymologies for lemmas precede etymologies for non-lemma forms. Languages on Wiktionary include non-lemma forms to varying degrees (if at all); however, it's a universal goal to increase the coverage of lemmas. In narrow cases, non-lemma etymologies can precede lemma etymologies, such as when a very common non-lemma form happens to have a rare or obsolete lemma homograph. Additionally, a lemma derived from a non-lemma form can follow that non-lemma form. Further deviations from this recommendation are allowable subject to editor consensus, reached on an entry's talk page, Beer parlour or another forum.


 * The vote “2007-10/style for mentioned terms” is relevant to this section, without specifying text to be amended in this document, so please see it for details.

Pronunciation

 * Main article: Pronunciation

The “Pronunciation” section includes the transcriptions, audio pronunciations, rhymes, hyphenations and homophones.


 * The region or accent (,, , et al.) is first if there is regional variation, followed by the name of the transcription system, then a colon, then the transcription. It is preferable to use an established transcription system, such as enPR or IPA (see Wiktionary:Pronunciation key for an outline of these two systems). Phonemic transcriptions are normally placed between diagonal strokes , and phonetic transcriptions between square brackets.
 * For audio pronunciations, upload the Ogg file to Commons and link to it using or a similar template.
 * Rhymes are listed in the “Rhymes” namespace. Do not list rhymes in the entry; instead, add a link to the respective rhymes page using . See the template for usage instructions.
 * Use the template to list hyphenation patterns.
 * Homophones are words in the same language that have the same sound. (Avoid using the ambiguous term, as it can mean either or .) Do not add: 1) words that are “nearly” homophones or rhymes (for example, for , do not add  or ); 2) words that are homophones if they are mispronounced in some way (e.g. for , do not add ); 3) words from other languages (which are unlikely to be true homophones anyway). Homophones are listed in alphabetical order using the  template. If a word is a homophone in a particular dialect, it may be added provided the dialect is indicated (for example,  is a homophone of  in accents with flapping, and  is a homophone of  in some non-rhotic accents).

A typical pronunciation section may look like the following (simplified) example based on the word :





Example with multiple accents (see entry ):



Examples with homophones depending on the dialect (see entries and, respectively):



Usage notes

 * These notes should not take the place of context labels when those are adequate for the job.
 * Describe how a term is used, rather than trying to dictate how it should be used from your point of view.
 * Curb the tendency to be long-winded in this section; brief explicit notes tend to be more effective.
 * When mentioning entries in running text, use the template, which italicizes entries written in Latin script.
 * Be prepared to document these notes with references.

Quotations

 * Main article: Quotations

Quotations are generally placed under the definition which they illustrate. If there is more than one being provided, or where this is not possible (e.g., a very early usage that does not clearly relate to a specific sense of the word), a separate section should be used. Quotations here are formatted normally but without definition numbers.


 * 1561, Flat Footed (translator), Platypus (author), Odes, chapter 3, line 12:
 * The hrunk it hrunketh every day.

Synonyms
This is a list of words that have similar meanings as the word being defined. They are often very inexact.

Where several definitions of the headword exist, synonyms can be given in a separate list for each meaning:


 * 1) Summarise the definition for which synonyms are being given with.
 * 2) List the synonyms for this definition, in alphabetical order and separated by commas, wikifying each synonym using.
 * 3) Use one line for each definition, beginning each line with a bullet.

The synonyms section for might look like this: *, ,  *  , ,

To avoid identical lengthy lists of synonyms in many entries a single reference can be made in each to a common Thesaurus page:

* See also Thesaurus:apex

An alternative to listing synonyms in a separate section is their placement immediately under the corresponding definition lines with :

#: #:
 * 1) The point, in an orbit about the Earth, that is furthest from the Earth.
 * 1) The highest point.

The choice between the two formats is subject to editorial discretion.

Further semantic relations

 * Main article: Semantic relations

The following headers are available to define sections containing semantically related words other than synonyms: Antonyms, Hypernyms, Hyponyms, Meronyms, Holonyms, Troponyms, Coordinate terms, See also.

Each of these sections is formatted exactly like the Synonyms section (see above).

All links in these sections use the template rather than plain wikilinks.

Derived terms
List terms in the same language that are morphological derivatives. For example, the noun driver is derived, by addition of the suffix -er, from the verb to drive. If it is not known from which part of speech a certain derivative was formed it is necessary to have a “Derived terms” header on the same level as the part of speech headings.

All links in this section use the template rather than plain wikilinks.

Related terms
List words in the same language that have strong etymological connections but aren’t derived terms. Each such term should be wikified. For example, datum and data should point to each other in this section since the latter is the plural of the former, and the plural form is not obtained by morphological derivation but was taken directly from Latin (where it is a morphological derivation). Another example is the pair of nouns pendant and pennant. These should cross-reference each other as they have very similar (arguably identical) etymologies in some subsenses.

Collocations

 * Main article: Collocations

Collocations are combinations of words that occur with much higher frequency than would be expected by chance.

Collocations may either be added under the corresponding sense using coi or co (after all nyms but before all examples), or under a dedicated  header, as described in Collocations.

Descendants
List terms in other languages that have borrowed or inherited the word. The etymology of these terms should then link back to the page.

Inherited terms should be listed first, ordered according to any layout specified on the relevant language considerations page (so far as one is specified), and otherwise alphabetically by language name or family at each indentation level. These are then followed by all other descendants (e.g. borrowed terms), alphabetically by language name at each indentation level. For languages with multi-word names, their place in the order is determined by the first letter of the first name component – for instance, Norwegian comes before Old English, which comes before Portuguese.

Translations

 * Main article: Translations


 * ONLY add translations that you are CERTAIN of. If you aren’t familiar with a language, or aren’t sure of a particular translation, it is far better not to add it than to risk adding an incorrect translation.
 * NEVER use automatic translation software to generate translations from English into a language you don’t speak. Automatic translations into English are likewise problematic. Translation software rarely gives accurate results.
 * DO NOT COPY from translating dictionaries (bilingual or multilingual) as this may constitute copyright violation. This applies to dictionaries both in print form and online. Dictionaries that are out of copyright may be used.


 * Translations should be given in English entries, and also in Translingual entries for taxonomic names. Entries for languages other than English and Translingual should not have Translations sections. Any translation between two foreign languages is best handled on the Wiktionaries in those languages.


 * English inflected forms will not have translations. For example, will not, as it is the plural and third-person singular of . In such entries as have additional meanings, these additional meanings should have translations. For example, the noun  should have translations, but the present participle of  will not.


 * The translation section is separated into a number of divisions that are keyed to the various meanings of the English word. Each division is separated into a distinct collapsible navigation box by use of the translation section templates (see below for example.) The boxes are each headed by a summary of the translated meaning.


 * Within each box, the languages for which translations exist are listed by their English names in alphabetical order. The language name is preceded by a bullet (generated by * ) followed by a colon and the translations into that language. The collapsible navigation box is obtained by adding the template just before the first language and  at the line after the last translation.


 * Use the template for each translation. This will create a link to that word in this Wiktionary and a small link to the Wiktionary for that language.    References for the translation should be on that other page rather than in the translation list. If you think  is too complex, simply enclose the translation in square brackets.


 * Translations not in the Latin script should display a transliteration according to that language’s transliteration policy, unless the policy states otherwise.


 * Do not link the language name.
 * Correct:
 * Portuguese: cachorro
 * Incorrect:
 * Portuguese: cachorro


 * Provide the grammatical gender of the translations of nouns, if appropriate, giving parameters such as m, f, n and c for “masculine”, “feminine”, “neuter” and “common” respectively to.


 * Do not add the pronunciation of the translation or detailed grammatical information: such information should be provided on the page for the translation itself.


 * Ensure that multiple translations are given in full. For example, for the German for “ankle”, which is Knöchel or Fußknöchel, write:
 * German: Knöchel, Fußknöchel
 * rather than just combining the two as “(Fuß-) Knöchel” or similar, which is liable to be misunderstood.


 * Do not give literal (word-for-word) translations of idioms, unless the literal translation is what is actually used in the target language. Most idioms do not translate word for word. For example, the idiom “none of your beeswax” cannot be translated into German literally as “nicht dein Bienenwachs”, as this does not have the same meaning in German; an idiomatic translation is “nicht dein Bier” (which means, literally, “not your beer” in English).


 * Do not give translations back into English of idiomatic translations. For example, when translating “bell bottoms” into French as “pattes d’éléphant”, do not follow this with the literal translation back into English of “elephant’s feet”. While this sort of information is undoubtedly interesting, it belongs in the entry for the translation itself.

Here is an example (a shortened version of the entry for orange) illustrating some of the conventions:

Noun

 * 1) The fruit of the orange tree.
 * 2) The reddish-yellow colour of an orange.

Translations

 * French: orange
 * German: Apfelsine, Orange
 * Japanese: オレンジ
 * Russian: апельси́н
 * Serbo-Croatian:
 * Cyrillic: наранџа, поморанџа
 * Roman: narandža, pomorandža


 * German: Orange
 * Hebrew: כתום
 * Latvian: oranžs

... ...
 * When a translation in the target language is not a lemma form, use alt parameter to display the translation but use lemma-forms as the page name, e.g. the Russian translation of links to the Russian verb  but displays спя́щий, which is an equivalent of.
 * Russian:


 * When there is no single word equivalent in the target language, use with embedded wikilinks for the individual words. For example the Russian translation of :

... ...
 * Russian: сре́дства к существова́нию

Result:


 * Russian: сре́дства к существова́нию

Trivia
Other observations may be added, under the heading “Trivia”. Because of the unlimited range of possibilities, no formatting details can be provided.

Anagrams

 * Main article: Anagrams

Anagrams may be entered in alphabetical order under a level 3 header. Only list anagrams that are words in the same language. For post, the anagrams section would look like this:



You may include the alphagram which is not wikied unless it is itself a word. For post, the anagrams section would look like this:



Metadata
This is material which is edited in a regular edit box, but does not appear in the entry when it is read. In some cases where it appears depends on your user preferences, especially the skin that you have chosen.

Category links

 * Main article: Categorization

A Wiktionary category is a group of related entries which are listed on a category page. Sub-categories may also appear on that page. Categories and lists under various names may seem very similar, but the way they are built is very different; in most cases, but especially in open-ended lists, they complement each other.

To include an entry in a category, simply add a category tag to the entry thus:

The link will appear at the bottom of the page in some skins and at the top in others, regardless of where it is placed in the edit box. Category links are placed one per line at the end of the appropriate language section. Putting these tags in a consistent place makes them easier to find in a longer entry’s edit field. A category link appears red if its category page has not yet been described, but categorized entries will appear there. You should edit a new category page, usually to add a brief description of the category and adding one or more tags to place it in a higher-level category.

By convention, it is preferable to use the plural for most category names that are nouns. This will avoid having a category divided in two when some use the plural and some use the singular.


 * Some votes are relevant to this section, without specifying text to be amended in this document, so please see them for details:
 * Representative entries
 * Lexical categories
 * Add en: to English topical categories, part 2
 * Categories of names 2
 * Derivations categories
 * Chinese categories
 * Rename Category:US Category:American English

Images
Lemma entries, whether English or non-English, can contain relevant images. Constraints: Further constraints may apply on a case-by-case basis, as decided by editors.
 * An image of a person relating to the coinage or etymology should be excluded unless another rationale for inclusion applies. Thus, newspeak should not contain an image of George Orwell, and Pythagorean theorem should not contain an image of Pythagoras.