Making a Wikipedia article

Guidance on how to make your own Wikipedia page.

General guidance 

Typical structure of a Wikipedia article:

  • lead section 
  • infobox 
  • body of the article 
  • images 
  • appendices and footnotes 

Your article should be well structured, have encyclopaedic content, which is backed up from reliable, published sources. In the lead section, you should also make the notability of your article clear and emphasise why it should be included on Wikipedia.

The tone is also very important when making your own Wikipedia article. When writing, your language should be neutral and accessible. For example, if you mention any terms which someone new to the subject may not understand you should see if there is a link to another Wikipedia page which explains the term. Only ever link a term the first time you use it. You should also avoid language that reflects your opinion or is not neutral. 

Make sure as well to link other Wikipedia pages to your new article. For example, if you are writing up an article about a book by a famous author, link to your new article from their page. Use the Find Link tool to identify pages that should link back to your new page.

You should have a look at Featured Articles to see Wikipedia’s best quality articles and you should consult Wikipedia's Manual of Style to understand what Wikipedia is expecting in terms of style and structure to keep articles consistent.

How to make your own article 

When making your own article you should aim for at least 100 words with three citations. You should draft your article in your sandbox.

Tip: use an exemplar page as your guideline. There are many excellent articles. See Featured Articles.

Building a biography page (pdf).

Drafting your article in the Sandbox 

You should draft your article in the Sandbox which you can think of as your personal draft space. You can create articles here without fear of them being interfered with by other editors. 

  1. Log in to your Wikipedia account. 
  2. Select the red 'Sandbox' link at the top of the screen. 
  3. Select 'Create' at the top of the page to use the Visual editor. 
  4. Put your cursor on 'Insert paragraph' and type in a sentence. You need at least one character of text to save your sandbox.  
  5. Select 'Publish changes' and type a brief edit summary. NB this does not publish your draft to Wikipedia's live space, it saves any work you have done which you can then go back and edit. 
How to create multiple sandboxes on Wikipedia

Moving draft articles into Wikipedia's live space

Once you feel your article is ready, you can move it into Wikipedia's live space! 

Please note: there is a restriction on new user accounts whereby new users are not permitted to publish to Wikipedia's live space until their user account has been in place for four days and they have made at least ten edits to Wikipedia. 

Further resources 

© Ewan McAndrew and Hannah Rothmann, University of Edinburgh, 2020, CC BY-SA 4.0, unless otherwise indicated.

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