Wikitext, also called wiki markup or wikicode, is the lightweight markup language used to write and format wiki pages. The MediaWiki project’s own documentation defines it as “the markup language that consists of the syntax and keywords used by the MediaWiki software to format a page,” noting that wikitext “features a mixture of content, markup, macros, and metadata.” It is the text that editors actually type, stored in the database and transformed into HTML for readers.
The syntax is built around terse, readable conventions rather than angle-bracketed tags. The MediaWiki formatting help explains that “to format a word in italic, you include it in two pairs of apostrophes” like ”this”, while three apostrophes produce bold and five produce both at once. Section headings are wrapped in matching equals signs, with more signs meaning deeper nesting; bullet lists start each line with an asterisk, and numbered lists start each line with a number sign. Limited HTML tags are also permitted where the shorthand is insufficient.
The most iconic feature of wikitext is the internal link. The MediaWiki documentation highlights the “user-friendly syntax, such as [[Link]] for making links,” where simply enclosing a page title in double square brackets creates a hyperlink to that page. This single convention was central to the original wiki idea: it made cross-linking so cheap that a web of interconnected pages could grow organically, with red links signaling pages that did not yet exist and inviting someone to create them.
The double-bracket link traces back to the very first wiki, Ward Cunningham’s WikiWikiWeb, and its descendants carried the same spirit of low-friction, collaborative editing. MediaWiki, the software that powers Wikipedia, inherited and greatly extended these conventions, layering on templates, macros, and metadata while keeping the core readable-text feel that lets newcomers contribute after learning only a handful of rules.
Wikitext’s strength as a quick markup is also its weakness as a precise, machine-processable format, which has driven a long-running effort toward visual editing. The MediaWiki Wikitext page describes Parsoid, a “translation tool for MediaWiki which translates between HTML5 DOM with RDFa and MediaWiki Wikitext.” Parsoid underpins the VisualEditor, letting people edit pages with a word-processor-like interface while the system round-trips changes back into clean wikitext, bridging the gap between human-friendly markup and reliable structured documents.