View source for Draft:Character limitations

{{policy|help page|proposed}}
NUTSHELL: This page outlines tools and guidance for handling character limitations in page titles.
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Due to the {{wp|MediaWiki}} software that [[Bulbapedia]] operates on, the following characters cannot be used in article titles: <code># < > [ ] | { } _</code>. Other characters such as {{wp|colon}}s and {{wp|period}}s may also cause technical issues in certain contexts. The {{Template|Wrongtitle}} template should be used at the top of the page when the title is inaccurate due to these restrictions.<!--needs an example-->

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==Display title==
The <code><nowiki>{{DISPLAYTITLE}}</nowiki></code> [[mw:Help:Magic words|magic word]] can be used to apply specific formatting to a page's [[mw:Display title|display title]]. Some templates automatically apply formatting this way when placed on the page. For example, the page {{aniseries|HZ}} uses an italicized title; since italics cannot be applied directly to the page title, this is handled by placing {{template|italics}} at the top of the page. If the desired title for an article cannot be represented with <code><nowiki>{{DISPLAYTITLE}}</nowiki></code>, place {{template|Wrongtitle}} at the top of the page.

Note that the first letter of page titles is displayed with a capital letter by default. Place the {{Template|lowercase}} template on the page to make the first letter display as lowercase instead, such as for [[e-Reader]]. Additionally, while not a valid character in the raw page title, the {{wp|underscore}} <code>_</code> can still be displayed in place of a space or at the beginning or end of a page title via <code><nowiki>{{DISPLAYTITLE}}</nowiki></code>.<!--Where does this apply?-->

==Redirects==
When non-standard characters not found on most keyboards are included in a title, create redirects for ease of search. For example, the article [[Nintendo Switch – OLED Model]] uses an {{wp|Dash#En dash|en dash}} <code>–</code> in its title, so a redirect was created from [[Nintendo Switch - OLED Model]], which uses the more common {{wp|Hyphen-minus|hyphen-minus symbol}} <code>-</code>. 

Note that some characters, like the {{wp|é|e-acute}} <code>é</code>, do not require redirects with a regular e, as the MediaWiki software will treat them as the same character. In these cases, a redirect is not needed.

==Link templates==
In cases where titles use unusual formatting that cannot be typed out conveniently, a link template may be used. For instance, the template {{template|DetPikMov}} displays the title of the Detective Pikachu movie as follows: {{DetPikMov}}. Similarly, the {{template|aniseries}} template can be used to link to a specific [[series]] of the {{pkmn|animated series}} while automatically applying italics, e.g. <code><nowiki>{{aniseries|HZ}}</nowiki></code> will display {{aniseries|HZ}}. 

For a full list of link templates, see [[Help:Link templates]].