A wikilink is enclosed in double square brackets.

On any Wikimedia page, [[Example]] produces a wikilink with the display text Example and the target page Example on the project you're currently on. For instance, here on the English Wikipedia, the wikilink would lead to the following URL (note the "en" in the address): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Example

To link to a section in another page, append a hash mark, pound or number sign (#) followed by the section name to the page name:

[[Page name#Section name|Displayed text]]

Note the use of piping, done to hide the # character. This is appropriate in Wikipedia articles.

Alternatively, format such section links with the section sign (§) instead of a # by using the {{Section link}} template (alias {{slink}}):

{{Section link|Page name|Section name}}

Note: you cannot use the § directly.

That is, use section link or Page name § Section name rather than Page name#Section name. A third option is to use a redirect (link to a page which link directly to a section, see MOS:SECTLINK).

Outside of article space, such as in talk page discussions, using the raw # syntax is fine. Wikipedia inherits this syntax from HTML.

These section links work the same regardless of nesting, i.e. whether you link to a section header, a subsection header or a sub-subsection header (sections nestled inside other sections):

[[Page name#Subsection name|Displayed text]]

{{Section link|Page name|Subsection name}}

Note that this means that each header title must be unique across the entire page (or your browser will simply link to the first one encountered). You do not and cannot indicate "a section within a section" — [[Page name#Section name#Subsection name|Displayed text]] doesn't work as intended.

To link to a section on the page you're already on, you may omit the page name:

[[#Section name|Displayed text]]

{{Section link||Section name}}

Omitting the page name is recommended when linking to a section in the same page because the link will work as expected when previewing changes or after moving the page. It also makes it clear you intend a same-page link.

Note that section names are entirely case sensitive, in contrast to article links, where the first letter is not case sensitive.

The characters [ ] { } | (right and left square bracket, right and left curly braces, and the vertical bar) require encoding when linking to a section. That is, you cannot use these characters inside the [[ ]] of a link. See note.^[1]

For more information, see Help:Section. See also Wikipedia:Redirect § Targeted and untargeted redirects.

Use a vertical bar | (the "pipe" symbol) to create a link with different display text than the name of the target page. Such a link is called a piped link. Within the link brackets [[target|text]], the part preceding the pipe gives the actual title of the link target page, and the part following the pipe gives the link display text:

[[a|b]] appears on the page as b, but, when opened, links to page a: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A

When a wikilink is opened, Wikipedia tries to resolve the Wikilink target title to its canonical target page. See § Conversion to canonical form

When resolving the target page, the target title is treated as case-sensitive except for the first character:

• [[atom]] links to Atom: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom
• [[aTom]] would link to "ATom", which does not exist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATom

:root .mw-selflink { text-decoration: none; }

When editing source, links are inserted or deleted simply by adding or removing pairs of square brackets enclosing the text concerned (plus handling piped links).

There are some helpful tools:

• When using the visual editor, selecting some text, then clicking the link icon above the text box (two links of a chain) will allow the link to be added, offering a selection of possible matches and the ability to pipe.
• When using the WikEd source editor, selectable from Preferences > Gadgets > Editing, there is a "Wiki link" button (typically the first button on the bottom row). When editing, if some text is highlighted, clicking the Wiki link button will enclose it in double brackets, i.e., Wikilink it. If, however, some text is highlighted that includes one or more internal links—in many cases just a single internal link with its delimiting brackets—they will be removed instead. For a single link without a pipe, the Wiki link button will toggle between linking and unlinking.

In mid-2015, Wikipedia and all other Wikimedia sites were changed to use HTTPS to encrypt all traffic. Accessing a URL like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Link will result in the webserver redirecting you to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Link. Therefore, when making an external-style link to an internal page (that is, using single square brackets, or a bare URL), https should be specified to avoid the needless redirect, as in https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Help:Link&action=history.

In the past, when Wikipedia could be accessed via either HTTP or HTTPS, a protocol-relative URL could be used to make an external link (or external-style link to an internal page) which would use http: or https: depending on how the page the link appeared on was accessed, as in [//www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Links]. However, as all Wikimedia sites now require HTTPS, this linking style is obsolete and should no longer be used. http: or https: should be explicitly specified as appropriate for the target site (preferring https:, where available).

A link from an origin page points to either a whole target page or to a particular spot on a target page. An "anchor" is the computer code that marks a destination spot on a target page. A link to an anchor is sometimes referred to as an "anchor link".

Wikipedia automatically creates an anchor for each section and subsection heading. As discussed below, editors may also create anchors anywhere on a target page using HTML code or the {{anchor}} template. Renaming a section or subsection changes its automatic anchor, leaving no target for pre-existing anchor links that use the old name. To preserve the old target, editors often create an anchor using the old heading name.

A link to a section title (as in the examples above) points to an HTML anchor that Wikipedia automatically generates on the target page. Editors can create anchors on smaller units of text using the {{Anchor}} template using specific rules for section anchors or the HTML code <span class="anchor" id="Anchor name">...</span>.

Links to anchors can also be added to external URLs and to interwiki links, again using the # syntax.

Section links still work through page names that are redirects. For example, if Danzig redirects to Gdańsk, then Danzig#History will link to the "History" section of the article Gdańsk. It is also possible for the target of a redirect to be defined as a specific section or anchor of a page (these work only if JavaScript is enabled). Indeed, according to the Manual of Style, it may be preferable to define such redirects, and use them when linking to those sections/anchors, rather than linking using the [[Page name#Section or anchor name|displayed text]] or {{Section link|Page name|Section name}} syntax. This way, if the section or anchored text later becomes its own article, links via the redirect won't need to be rewritten.

For example, Wikipedia:Section link redirects specifically to the section Help:Link#Anchors on this page. A quirk of the way this works is that if one were to add a section name when using such a link, it would override the section specified by the redirect. So Wikipedia:Section link#Interwiki links would go to the "Interwiki links" section of this page. Such overriding of section redirects should be avoided.

The {{Visible anchor}} template can be used to create an anchor that is highlighted when it is linked to (click here for an example). The template's first parameter will be used as both the anchor and the display text (|text= can be used to provide different display text).

If more than one section on a target page has the same title, a link to the title goes to the first section with that title. If the link should be to another section with the title, or a title that differs only in capitalization (Example vs. EXAMPLE), append to the linked title _2, _3, and so on, without a space (or 2, 3, and so on with a space), counting from the top of the target page and without regard to whether a section is a top-level section or a subsection. For example, multiple sections titled "History" may be linked to as "History", "History_2" (or "History 2"), and so on.

Anchors can also be used to link to any part of a section. For example, if you want to link to the fifth sentence of a section, you place an anchor at the start of that sentence, and you can then link to that anchor in the same way as you would link to any other anchor.

However, just as with section names, duplicate anchor names only link to the first one. Since anchors aren't displayed, you have a much greater freedom in picking unique anchors, such as by appending the current date and time to the anchor name (for example, by naming an anchor for section "ThisSection" like so: {{Anchor|ThisSection_2014-09-22_18-05a1}} ).

Anchors can be placed anywhere, including at the start of a clause, and inside notes and citations, though it is advisable to test first in your sandbox before trying some exotic new kind of location for the first time. Also the anchor has to be placed after any indicators that are only recognized at the start of a line (such as == for new section, * for new bullet point, : for indentation), as the anchor should still work, but the start-of-line indicator usually no longer will (and you may not always notice this, perhaps especially if you are in a hurry).

There are a small number of special anchor names. See § Table row linking.

To create an anchor for a row of a table, see Help:Tables and locations § Section link or map link to a row anchor. However, [[#top]] and [[#toc]] are reserved names that link to the top of a page and the table of contents, respectively.

An alternative to a piped link is using a redirect page. For example, it is unnecessary to say [[Mark Twain|Samuel Clemens]]. Samuel Clemens is a redirect to Mark Twain, so saying [[Samuel Clemens]] is sufficient. A minor drawback of redirects is that "Related changes" will only display the changes to the redirect page, not the redirect target.

The pipe trick uses the pipe character ("|") to automatically convert the label of a piped link for several kinds of wikilinks. This saves time and avoids potential errors. When the last character of a link is the pipe character, the software will remove the parenthesized part of the title and namespace prefixes and handle commas in the title. This processing happens after clicking "Publish", and the generated text is saved with the rest of the page's wiki markup. Just like for the three or four tildes when signing on Talk pages and the use of subst, in a preview, the result already shows up in the preview itself, but the conversion in the edit box is not yet shown. Press "Show changes" to see the change in the wikitext:

1. Any word before the first colon (:), as well as the colon itself, is removed. This word may or may not be a namespace prefix (such as "Help:") or an interwiki prefix (such as "commons:"). If the page name is preceded by a colon, "first" refers to "first after this".
2. If there is text in parentheses at the end it will be removed.
3. If there are no parentheses but there is a comma, the comma and everything after it are removed.
4. The link will remain in whatever case is used.

The pipe trick does not work in edit summaries, within <ref> tags, or with section links. In cases where the pipe trick doesn't work, the link has to be written out in full manually:

between "ref" tags or gallery tags, but works with {{r}} or {{refn}}. <ref>[[Roger Taylor (author)|]]</ref> renders in the references list as