wikiHow:Use Advanced Wiki Syntax Formatting

The table below is filled with text that looks like it is formally declaring [row 1, column 1] (it's not): merely replace that with text, alpha and/or numbers, and it will display your text instead.

{| class="wikitable" border="1" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"
|+ Table Title
|-
! header
! header 1
! header 2
! header 3
|- Style="color: red; background: yellow"
! row 1 header
| row 1 cell 1
| row 1 cell 2
| row 1 cell 3
|-
! row 2 header
| row 2 cell 1
| Style="color: white; background: blue"|row 2 cell 2
| row 2 cell 3
|}

Simple Example Table

{| class="wikitable" border="1" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"
|+ Table Title
|- 
! Text
! Any text!
! This, okay?
! That'll do!
|- Style="color: red; background: yellow" 
! stuff
| tricycles
| 'cycles
| wheelies
|-
! What?
| ''Trivial Pursuits'' trivia game
| Style="color: white; background: blue"|steps
| extraterrestrial-entity
|-
|}

1. Notice that the "!" as the first character in cell 1 of each row is the center and bold header modifier, which looks good for headers.
   • Cells expand to accommodate a long word and automatically set that column width to the longest word in the text of that column, and use two or more lines.
   • If you look at this article in edit mode you'll see much of it uses tables to set up the columnar format used. The <pre></pre> is like <nowiki></nowiki>, meaning the table code can be previewed, and since the two tables are combined it makes the "pre" table be "sort of another column" automatically.
2. Start simply and build up various understandings of wikitable syntax. One caveat is that declaring {|class= "wikitable" causes the system to follow the rules of that class of objects; so, you may want to find out the rules at wikipedia.org "Help:Table".
3. Get "Table Help": Scan and find the table syntax in step by step increasingly complex tables at Wikipedia:Help:Table for a series of such examples.

Complex Example Convert Feet to Meters

1. Calculate and display math using codes -- perhaps too many -- such as, tr align="center", margin-left:auto and margin-right:auto, span and /span, strike and /strike, span style="text-decoration: underline;", td width="15px" : Here's a not very complex looking calculation using a surprising slough of table codes:
   
   

   ____ ft

   *

   12 in 1 ft

   *

   2.54 cm 1 in

   *

   1 m 100 cm

   =

   ? m

   
   
2. Go into edit mode: in this article, or the source Convert Feet to Meters, to see what an astonishing collection of codes produced this calculation.
   • See article "History" for codes that were "unnecessary" like declaring border="0" and margins="auto"; that was default (not needed to declare), but center code was necessary to be moved outside after margin declaration was gone!; also it had span id="formulavaluefrom" and span id="formulavalueto", which were not being used (at all), so, no such id was needed. Removed! Previewed! Worked! "To use or not to use such codes?" -- that is the question':
     • Answer! Some times it's good to use all those in early versions of a table and experiment with various values and preview the results, repeatedly, but here they were not used in the long-run, so -- were deleted!