Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Layout

MOS:ALSO

Can category links be in See also, e.g. Judicial reform#See also? HKLionel TALK 12:35, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

Pretty sure I've seen it elsewhere. I'd say it falls under "a matter of editorial judgment and common sense." Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 16:44, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

Then how should I arrange category links? For Category:United States federal judiciary legislation, do I ignore the namespace prefix and treat the first letter as U, or do I treat it as C and put it at the front? Thanks, HKLionel TALK 00:04, 6 February 2026 (UTC)

I vote for (c), none of the above. Put it at the end of the list after all of the article links. - Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 00:51, 6 February 2026 (UTC)

Funny how in my case it happens to be so, makes sense as well. HKLionel TALK 00:59, 6 February 2026 (UTC)

MOS:NOTSEEALSO, wording

Just noticed it says "As a general rule, the "See also" section should not repeat links that appear in the article's body." My emphasis.

Is this meant to be read that links in the lead doesn't "count" here and are generally fine to repeat in the See also section? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 16:41, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

No, at times "body" can refer to all textual sections in an article, lead included. That's one of them. Yeah, I know that can be confusing, but it's as it is. General rule of thumb: if the lead isn't mentioned separately, it's considered part of the body. Gawaon (talk) 17:11, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

Makes sense to me. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 17:18, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

Why would something be linked in the lead, not linked in the body, but be a useful see also? Do you have an example? HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 17:18, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

If the question was meant for me, no, I don't have an example, I asked because the wording struck me as ambiguous. I tend to weed See also if I see the need, and wondered if I'd missed something. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 17:26, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

Mentions of legacy Table of contents

The page makes a reference to the legacy WP:TOC and it also appears in the sample article layout. Could someone provide an up-to-date sample image? I'm concerned being bold and removing the text mention may make things extra confusing if the image isn't updated at the same time. Apologies for the WikiImp behavior, I just don't feel experienced enough to be best placed to handle this. Arandomfolk (talk) 13:36, 18 February 2026 (UTC)

Seeking input on a Further Reading section

Anyone interested in MOS and Further Reading Sections is welcome to weigh in on the one at Sigmund Freud. Discussion is at Talk:Sigmund_Freud#Revisiting_the_Freud_Page Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 06:30, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

Regarding the purposes of "See also" section

I always thought that one of the main purposes of that section is to hold articles on topics that should be mentioned in the body, but aren't yet, and as articles transition to GA/FA, such links will be incorporated into the body, leaving only the odds ones like lists of related topics or such that cannot be mentioned in the main body. Yet I cannot find this in the current description of the section. Should we add something along these lines? _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 01:35, 26 March 2026 (UTC)

It was the purpose, I believe, but certain editors have been trying to change it. For example, User:Randy Kryn is an advocate of adding see also sections when articles already have the links in the body or in the footer or in a sidebar. I will let him explain his reasoning to you. I've asked him not to add them to articles I create but he won't listen. Viriditas (talk) 01:48, 26 March 2026 (UTC)

That roughly matches my understanding of the purpose of these sections as well. Sometimes even in GA and FA there are see-also links that it would be inconvenient to incorporate into the main text or that would bloat the text too much but are relevant enough to list, but they can also be a parking area for subtopics in need of expansion. I routinely undo edits adding see-also links that duplicate links in the main text, pointing to MOS:SEEALSO as the justification for the undo. But I'm not convinced that adding text about this purpose to the MOS would be a good idea; it's too likely to creep into rules about never having see also links in GA/FA or into editors removing valid and relevant see-also links with the rationale that they cannot be converted into article text. —David Eppstein (talk) 02:26, 26 March 2026 (UTC)

I'd rather try to develop some helpful way to say what stuff is valid but cannot be incorporated into body at the GA+ level, while saying its fine and even good to dump stuff into see also at lower levels as a form of "this needs to be in body for this to be a good article" roadmap. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 01:04, 27 March 2026 (UTC)

A simple explanation should be enough to dispel some,butnotall, of Viriditas's portrayal (when a mental picture is made some of it sticks around, the basis of first impressions). What I usually add to his painting articles are, are you sitting down?, See also links to "List of paintings by foo". That's it. Here's his great new art page (and I mean it, one of Wikipedia's best writers), Room in Brooklyn. Note that I added a 'See also' section with one entry, List of works by Edward Hopper. This is allowable and totally within the rules and regs of the See also guideline. But the complaint comes because it also appears in the {{Edward Hopper}} navbox. Is that enough to blank the See also listing? No, not even close. Here's the rub: Navboxes are offered to only 30% of readers. Mobile readers don't get them (their loss). so the footer or side navboxes don't have the firepower to replace a good See also link. As for lists, adding directly related lists to 'See also' has occurred since the first cavewikipedian thought of it. If you have a minute, here's some of my work, which should impress (saying that because the reader increase of some of these things still impresses me). Thanks, and will stop here before my tl;dr kicks in. Randy Kryn (talk) 03:53, 26 March 2026 (UTC)

@Piotrus, I think you're thinking of WP:NOTSEEALSO: As a general rule, the "See also" section should not repeat links that appear in the article's body. ~Kvng (talk) 14:55, 30 March 2026 (UTC)

I think this accurately states how the guideline is intended to operate, although as David Eppstein explains above, it probably should not be enshrined in the guideline itself. That said (and recognizing that I'm probably not saying anything that hasn't been said before), I feel like this gets to the silliness of WP:NOTSEEALSO, which seems to be premised on a hypothetical reader who reviews every link in the article. It is hard to imagine that such reader behavior is very common even for short articles. The idea of a non-editor doing all that for a full-length article -- rather than just clicking down to the "See also" section in hopes of finding other interesting articles on related topics -- seems exceptionally implausible. NOTSEEALSO is of very long standing and probably not realistically changeable, but it's hard to imagine who it is intended to serve. -- Visviva (talk) 05:07, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

There used to be a portion that read ... as many high-quality and comprehensive articles do not have a "See also" section, although some featured articles such as 1740 Batavia massacre and Mary, Queen of Scots include this section.[1] —Bagumba (talk) 05:35, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

The claim being made in that edit summary does not appear to be correct. Suggest the wording be reversed: most don't, though some do. Nikkimaria (talk) 04:34, 22 May 2026 (UTC)

The current wording ("the section itself is not required; many high-quality and comprehensive articles do not have one") seems fine to me. Gawaon (talk) 06:38, 22 May 2026 (UTC)

I think the main problem with moving away from WP:NOTSEEALSO towards a more inclusive guideline is defining where you stop. We don't want an entire topic index in this section; that's what portals, list articles, navigation templates and categories are for. ~Kvng (talk)

Adding recommendations for splitting large sections with additional headings

Currently, Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Layout#Headings and sections states "Very short sections and subsections clutter an article with headings and inhibit the flow of the prose. Short paragraphs and single sentences generally do not warrant their own subheadings." However, it does not mention how long sections can also be problematic. I would like to add the following text, or something similar, after the quoted section above:

"Very long sections, consisting of too many paragraphs, makes article navigation more difficult and inhibits the reader's understanding of the section's topic. Sections typically are not longer than four paragraphs, although there are situations where longer sections are preferred. If a section is five paragraphs or larger, consider splitting it with headings or subheadings. The likelihood that a section needs to be split increases with the number of paragraphs it contains."

I look forward to reading thoughts on this addition. Z1720 (talk) 17:22, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

Five paragraphs is normal and harmless. Once a section has more than 10–12 paragraphs, I'd consider splitting. Gawaon (talk) 18:04, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

• @Gawaon: Nine paragraphs for a section seems very high to me. If I was evaluating an article for GA and there was nine paragraphs under a level 2 heading, I would recommend adding one or two level 3 headings to that section to split up the text. I chose four because MOS:LEAD used to limit the lead to four parargaphs, so I figured that was a good benchmark. Z1720 (talk) 01:18, 6 May 2026 (UTC)

  Four is far too short a threshold for MOS-based discouragement, this is WP:CREEP, and we should be evaluating length based on relevance of content not on bean-counting. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:29, 6 May 2026 (UTC)

Personally I think context plays a big role in evaulating how to split sections, so I think I'd rather not have a specific metric, and continue to leave it up to the interested editors to discuss on a case-by-case basis. isaacl (talk) 02:27, 6 May 2026 (UTC)

Agreed. Maybe I’m not browsing the right pages, but I find overlong sections to be a very rare occurrence, to the degree that I feel adding explicit instructions would cause more harm than help.  novov talk edits 03:40, 6 May 2026 (UTC)

I think that a reminder about splitting is good.

I think that longer sections should be split "naturally", i.e., according to what makes sense for the content. That could mean having just one sub-section (though Miss Snodgrass would disapprove) or having one that's longer and a second that is very short.

Over the years, I have seen multiple editors say that short subsections are easier for them to read and to find the thing they're interested in. Short(ish) sections with lots of headings is a generally recommended accessibility approach for people with dyslexia. Consequently, I usually take a "live and let live" approach to that. When I write an article, I put in the number of section headings that makes sense to me, and when someone else writes an article, I don't (usually) interfere if they put in more section headings than I would have (unless it's a long list of section headings with one bullet point or one sentence each. There are limits, after all). WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:14, 6 May 2026 (UTC)

Both overly long and overly short sections have issues, but where the balance lies is something that can only be determined in the context of the individual article. A section containing two long, information dense paragraphs can be appropriate, as can a section containing ten short and simple paragraphs, the latter particularly if they are split up by non-prose material such as formulas. Thryduulf (talk) 10:01, 6 May 2026 (UTC)

• I do not in principle object to a reminder that splitting overlong sections is good, but I would resist the urge to put in a specific threshold. This is a classic WP:CREEP problem. Once we make a rule (9 paragraphs, maybe?) it can be taken as a license to write sections having 9 paragraphs, when that is already (usually) far too long. Some sections with fewer paragraphs would benefit by subsectioning, others possibly not, and it's hard to imagine thresholds that would cover all potential use-cases. Sławomir Biały (talk) 10:33, 6 May 2026 (UTC)
• For easy access to information, rather than sections of equal size, I feel it's more important to have some consistent organization of sections for that topic area (and there are already MOS guidelines for many of these). Making recommendations by size could mean artificially associating information which would be better separated or arbitrarily splitting content that should be united. For example, film articles (below the GA level) often have the plot section as the longest in the article, but I don't feel it would make sense to recommend splitting it into subsections. Nor would it make sense to jam other sections together simply to balance size with the Plot section. – Reidgreg (talk) 13:26, 6 May 2026 (UTC)

  I'd also like to note that layout changes can be disruptive, and I fear that a guideline like this could offer free license for a certain type of editor to make widespread layout changes throughout the encyclopedia, hampering the efforts of those who are trying to balance the sections through content expansion (which should be the goal). – Reidgreg (talk) 13:36, 6 May 2026 (UTC)

  And on that note, frequent changes to section headings is likely to increase the issue of broken section redirects. Thryduulf (talk) 14:06, 6 May 2026 (UTC)

• Outside of say a few chronological history sections, where splitting raises questions about periodisation that may not neatly align with five-paragraph splits, I can't think off the top of my head of running into this very often. Over-long sections tend to naturally sort themselves into distinguishable sections as the prose is refined (good writing keeps a topic somewhat together), whereas overshort sections can result from a structure being created before the content is considered. CMD (talk) 13:37, 6 May 2026 (UTC)
• I'd like to note that this talk section has (after making this comment) 18 paragraphs, and does not have additional headings. We do add these headings to some megathreads, but only when they get much longer than this. I do not think that, at the current length, the lack of headings inhibits the flow of the discussion; in fact I think the opposite would be true. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:55, 7 May 2026 (UTC)