Add Bullet Points to a wikiHow Article

At times, a long wikiHow article can be organized and more easily understood with bulleted lists. With practice, you'll be able to easily add bullet points to give your articles an advanced edge!

10 Second Summary

1. Use a numeral sign (#) to create a step.
2. Use a numeral sign with an asterisk next to it (#*) to create a bullet point.
3. Indent the bullet point by adding more asterisks (such as #**).
4. Create bullet points outside of Steps by using an asterisk (*).
5. Indent the bullet points outside of steps by using multiple asterisks (such as **).

Steps

Creating Bullets in Steps

1. Click Edit at the top of your chosen article.
2. Choose whether to edit in Advanced or Guided Editing. Advanced Editing is preferred for creating bullets, since the wikitext doesn't automatically try to format itself. However, it's possible to create bullets in the Guided Editor, so choose whichever editor you feel more comfortable with.
3. Start off by writing a step. Format the step with a numeral sign (#) and proceed to write the step, so that the bullet will have a step to build off of. If you're using Guided Editor, hitting ↵ Enter will automatically format new steps for you, but if you're using Advanced Editor, you'll have to type it manually.
4. Create a bullet point by putting an asterisk after the numeral sign. Make sure there are no spaces between the numeral sign, or the bullet point won't work.
   • This is an indented bullet, created with one asterisk. (#*)
5. Indent the bullet further by using two asterisks instead of one. You can start to see at this point that wikitext builds off itself - in this case, it's building on the asterisks.
   • This is an indented bullet, created with one asterisk.
     • This is another indented bullet, created with two asterisks. (#**)
6. Indent even further by using three asterisks.
   • This is an indented bullet, created with one asterisk.
     • This is another indented bullet, created with two asterisks.
       • This is yet another indented bullet, created with three asterisks. (#***)
7. Continue to build off of the wikitext. If you need to add more bullets to the steps, just continue adding asterisks, and you'll keep creating indented bullets. Just be careful not to make too many, as this can be an eyesore for readers.
   • This is an indented bullet, created with one asterisk.
     • This is another indented bullet, created with two asterisks.
       • This is yet another indented bullet, created with three asterisks.
         • And here's another indented bullet, created with four asterisks! (#****)
8. Continue using wikitext formatting like usual. After you've finished formatting your bullet points, you can create a new step like usual - just start it with a numeral sign.
9. Preview your changes to make sure they're formatted correctly. If the formatting appears incorrectly, you made a mistake somewhere. Check to make sure there's no incorrect spacing and that the article meets the Format a wikiHow Article.
10. Publish your changes to make them live.

Creating Bullets in Other Sections of Articles

1. Click on Edit on the page that you want to edit.
2. Scroll to the section that you want to edit. All sections that are not the Steps section will use asterisks. For example, Tips, Ingredients, and Warnings will use asterisks.
3. Use one asterisk to create a bullet point. This bullet point will not be indented.
4. Use two asterisks to make an indented bullet point. Write ** to create the indent. Be careful not to put a space between the asterisks or in front of the asterisks, as this will break the format.
   • In sections of articles that use checkboxes rather than bullets (such as Ingredients or Things You'll Need), using more than one asterisk will not present checkboxes. It'll start to present as bullet points.
5. Indent further by using more than two asterisks. You can see an example of this by going to .
6. Preview your changes to make sure they're formatted correctly. If the formatting appears incorrectly, you made a mistake somewhere. Check to make sure there's no incorrect spacing and that the article meets the Format a wikiHow Article.
7. Publish your changes to make them live.

Using HTML Formatting

In some articles, such as Write a Programming Article on wikiHow, you may find yourself needing to use HTML rather than wikitext.

1. Click Edit on the page you want to edit.
2. Access the Advanced Editor. You can't use HTML formatting in Guided Editor, as Guided Editor will try to format the article using wikitext.
3. Set up the basic HTML. Write <ol> under == Steps ==.
   • <ol> creates an ordered list - in other words, a list that labels the steps with numbers.
4. Start a step by writing <li>. Write your step after the <li>.
5. Close the step by writing </li>.
6. Create bullet points with unordered lists. To start an unordered list, use the code <ul>. Use the <li> and </li> to create bullets or substeps.
   • <ul><li>This is what a single bullet point would look like in the editor.</li></ul>
7. Add more <ul> and </ul> tags to indent the bullets. For example, to create a double-indented bullet, you would write <li><ul><ul>, and close it with </ul></ul></li>.
   • <ul><li>This is what a single bullet point would look like in the editor.</li>
     • <ul><li>A double-indented bullet would be formatted like this.</li></ul></ul>
8. Close the unordered list(s) when finished by using </ul>. Make sure to close all the unordered lists you opened, or you may encounter an error when publishing.
9. Close the ordered list when finished writing steps and substeps. Once you've finished writing the article's steps, close off the ordered list by writing </ol> after the </li>. If you forget to end the ordered list, you may run into an error when trying to publish the edit, so be sure to remember to end the list!
10. Write other sections of the article in wikitext, if you need to. If you're writing in Tips, for example, and you don't need to put in any more HTML or codeboxes, then you can switch back to using asterisks.
11. Write at the end of the article for an article with a single Steps section. This will Force an Article to Open With the Advanced Editor in wikiHow, which means that Guided Editor won't try to format the article in wikitext (which can break the format).
    • It's best to place the code at the end of the article, so that it doesn't confuse new editors.
12. Use or for articles with multiple subsections. If your article has multiple headers, then add the or code at the end of the article to make sure the sections format properly.
    • You don't need to add the , since articles with multiple sections will automatically open in Advanced Editor.
13. Preview your changes to make sure they're formatted correctly. This is more important with HTML formatting, since it's easy to miss an unclosed tag, so be sure to preview it before hitting Publish.
    • If you encounter an error when trying to preview, you probably didn't close a tag. Hit the Back button on your browser and look for the unclosed tag.
14. Publish your changes to make them live.

Tips

• Here is an example of one asterisk in Tips. (*)
  • Here is an example of two. (**)
    • Here is an example of three. (***)
      • Here is an example of four. (****)
• In Guided Editor, pressing ↵ Enter will create the next numbered step.
• Always close your tags when editing in HTML! Not doing so can create errors.

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