Help:Language sections

All entries should contain the language of the current term, phrase, symbol, morpheme or other lexical unit.

For example, nevertheless is an English word. The explanation of the English word starts with the language name: "English". If you try to edit the page, you are going to see that "English" is surrounded by two equal signs on each side in the wiki markup. This means that "English" is a level-two header; it is the title of a level-two section. (=== is level three, ==== is level four, etc.) See a simplified version of the page:

==English==

===Adverb===
{{en-adv|-}}

# ] what ]d; ].

All other content following ==English== is said to be inside the English section; this holds true until the end of the page or the beginning of the next level-two section.

Compare a simplified version of Portuguese aviação, starting with a "Portuguese" level-two language section:

==Portuguese==

===Noun===
{{pt-noun|f|-}}

# {{l|en|aviation}}

Often, the same word is used in multiple languages. See this simplified version of sea, containing only English and Spanish. In this case, the same entry holds multiple language sections, make their sections without overlapping each other.

==English==

===Noun===
{{en-noun|-}}

# A large body of ] ].

==Spanish==

===Verb===
{{es-verb-form}}

# {{es-verb form of|mood=subj|tense=pres|num=s|pers=1|ending=er|ser}}

We have the "Translingual" language section for 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 Homo sapiens, He (“helium”), and km (“kilometre”). English comes next, because this is the English Wiktionary.

This is a simplied version of the entry km:

==Translingual==

===Symbol===
{{head|mul|symbol}}

# {{l|en|kilometre}}

In an entry with multiple language sections, the order or languages is standardized this way:

• Priority is given to Translingual.
• English comes next, because this is the English Wiktionary.
• After that come other languages in alphabetical order.

There are multiple templates that can be used to link to language sections. Here are some templates.

{{l}} is a shorthand for "link" and is used in lists of synonyms, derived terms, etc. It is often in definitions to point to the English section of an entry. In the examples below, "en" is the language code for English, so the templates are linking specifically to the English section.

* {{l|en|up}}
* {{l|en|down}}
* {{l|en|left}}
* {{l|en|right}}

Result:

• up
• down
• left
• right

{{m}} is a shorthand for "mention" and is used when mentioning a word, term, etc. in running text, especially in the "Etymology" and "Usage notes" sections. This template italicizes text written in Latin script (written with: A, B, C, D, rather than other characters found in some other languages)

Consider this sentence that uses {{m}}:

The word {{m|en|the}} has 3 letters.

Result:

The word the has 3 letters.

Note: Links to specific language sections in this format are accepted by the software, but editors usually replace them by templates in entries. Reasons include: templates are shorter to read and include additional formatting, language tags, fonts, etc.

]

Result:

fish