between two lines will be ignored. To make a paragraph break, you need two newlines, i.e. an empty line between the two paragraphs. More than one empty line will lead to a bigger gap.
Pre-formatting
    Starting a line with one or more spaces will lead to that line being displayed in a pre-formatted way. So having a line like “ This is some text” (note that first space) is equivalent to “

This is some text

”. (

 is a standard HTML tag.)
Headers
    Headers are defined by putting the header text on a line by itself, surrounded by an equal number of equals signs (“=”) on both sides. The standard way to create a top-level header is by putting it between two ’==’, like this:
==Instructions==
    This corresponds to the HTML tag 
. You can actually also use 
, but then the header won’t show up in the page’s table of contents, and it won’t get an “Edit” link.
    Headers for sub-sections, sub-sub-sections, etc. are defined using a progressively higher number of equals signs. You can also use a single pair of equals signs, which creates an 
 header, but this is not recommended, because only the page title at the top is supposed to have such a header. (Such headers are used, though, with the Header Tabs extension — see here .)
Bold and italics
    Bold and italics are defined using two and three single-quotes, respectively. They can also be combined together. The following wikitext:
Is ''that'' your '''desk''' on my '''''front lawn'''''?
    ...will produce this display:
Is that your desk on my front lawn ?
Links
    There are two kinds of links you can create: internal (to other wiki pages), and external (to outside URLs). To create an internal link, use double square brackets, like this:
[[Favorite balloons]]
    You can modify the link text, by adding more text after a pipe (“|”), like this:
[[Favorite balloons|Check out my favorite balloons!]]
    MediaWiki also has a feature called “link blending”, where text placed after an internal link gets incorporated into the link display. This feature is used often on Wikipedia. So if the name of the article is just “Favorite balloon”, but you still want the link to read “Favorite balloons”, you could do:
Check out my [[favorite balloon]]s!
    Note also that, by default, the first letter in the link is case-insensitive.
    External links are done using single square brackets, and there there’s no pipe before the link text — you just put in the URL, and add the link text right afterwards. (This is because true URLs don’t contain spaces — spaces, like various other special characters, get URL-encoded.) So you could have something like this:
[http://geocities.com/joeuser/balloons.html Check out my favorite balloons from 1996!]
Lists and indentation
    You can also create numbered and unnumbered lists. Here is text to create an unnumbered list, with bullet points:
* These
* are
* some bullet points
    This will produce the following text:
• These
• are
• some bullet points
    You can make hierarchical bullet point lists, by using multiple asterisks together. The following wikitext:
* These are
** some nested
** bullet points
    ...will produce this:
• These are
• some nested
• bullet points
    To display a numbered list, use “#” instead of “*”. So the following text:
# Buy groceries
# Cook
# Eat
    ...will produce this:
1. Buy groceries
2. Cook
3. Eat
    Care has to be taken with numbered lists not to put any extra newlines between one numbered row and the next, because if that is done the numbers will start over at 1.
    You can indent text, by putting “:” at the beginning of the line. As with asterisks, putting multiple colons at the beginning of the line will indent further. This comes in very handy in talk pages (see here ).
    Semicolons at the beginning of a line will bold the text; they’re meant to be used for definition headers. There’s an interesting bit of formatting to them that takes some getting used to — putting a colon on that line splits it up into “term” and “definition”. So if you have wikitext like this:
;Ray: A drop of golden sun
    It will produce a display like the following:
Ray
A drop of golden sun
Tables
    There is also special syntax for defining tables. Here is code for a simple table:
{| class=\textquotedblwikitable\textquotedbl
! 10:30 - 11 AM
| style=\textquotedblfont-style: italic\textquotedbl | Snack break
|-
! 11 - 11:30 AM
| Clay sculpting
|}
    “{|” and “|}” mark the beginning and end