Help:How to edit a page

Ancient Near East is a Wiki, which means that anyone can easily edit any article and have those changes posted immediately to that page.

Editing a Wiki page is very easy. Simply click on the "edit this page" tab at the top (or the edit link on the right or bottom) of a Wiki page. This will bring you to a page with a text box containing the editable text of that page. If you just want to experiment, please do so in the sandbox; not here. You should write a short edit summary in the small field below the edit-box. You may use shorthand to describe your changes, and when you have finished, press "Preview" to see how your changes will look. You can also see what changes you have made in comparison to the previous version by pressing the Show changes button. If you're happy with what you see, then press "Save" and your changes will be immediately applied to the article. Don't "sign" edits you make to regular articles (the software keeps track of who makes every change).

You can also click on the "Discussion" tab to see the corresponding talk page, which contains comments about the page from other Wikipedia users. Click on the "+" tab to add a new section, or edit the page in the same way as an article page. When editing talk pages, please sign your change.

Tips on editing Wikipedia articles
Always use a neutral point of view, as Ancient Near East is not a place to promote points of view. Write as if the information is a non-judgmental news article.

Cite your sources so others can check and extend your work. Please help by researching online and print resources to find references for the article you are working on, then cite them in proper form, and consider in-text citation for contentious facts. There is no consensus on the best way to do that, but anything is better than nothing. You can either use in-text citation in academic form such as (Example, 2004, pp 22-23) or as a superscript1 to a footnote that you place at the end of an article.

After making a new page, it's a good idea to:
 * use What links here (with your page displayed) to check the articles that already link to it, and make sure that they are all expecting the same meaning that you have supplied; and
 * use the Search button to search Wikipedia for your topic title—and possible variants—to find articles that mention it, and make links from them if appropriate.

Minor edits
When editing a page, a logged-in user can mark that edit as being "minor." Minor edits generally mean spelling corrections, formatting, and minor rearrangement of text. It is possible to hide minor edits when viewing Special:Recentchanges. Marking a significant change as a minor edit is considered bad behavior, and even more so if it involves the deletion of some text. If one has accidentally marked an edit as minor, the person should edit the source once more, mark it major (or, rather, ensure that the check-box for "This is a minor edit" is not checked), and, in the summary, state that the previous change was a major one.

Wiki markup
The wiki markup is the syntax system you can use to format a wiki page.

In the left column of the table below, you can see what effects are possible. In the right column, you can see how those effects were achieved. In other words, to make text look like it looks in the left column, type it in the format you see in the right column.

You may want to keep this page open in a separate browser window for reference, or take a screen-shot of it. If you want to try out things without danger of doing any harm, you can do so in the Sandbox. Try opening the Sandbox in a separate window or tab and keeping this page open for reference.

Please see the MediaWiki editing overview for markup details.