(including parser functions, variables and behavior switches) are features of wiki markup that give instructions to Wikipedia's underlying MediaWiki software. For example, magic words can suppress or position the table of contents, disable indexing by external search engines, and produce output dynamically based on the current page or on user-defined conditional logic. Some of these features are especially useful for templates.
This page is a quick reference for magic words. For more information, refer to the main MediaWiki documentation:
mw:Help:Magic words: All standard magic words, including the "standard" parser functions.
Behavior switches: often appear in double underscores, all uppercase, e.g., __NOTOC__. They will change the behavior of a page, rather than return a value.
Parser functions: all in lowercase. A parser function will be followed by colon and pipe-separated parameters, e.g., {{#ifexpr:Y|Yes|No}}, wrapped in double braces. They will take a value and return a value.
Variables: these are all uppercase, e.g., {{PAGENAME}}. A variable will be wrapped in double braces and will return a value in its place.
The software generally interprets magic words in the following way:
White space is generously allowed for readability. It will be stripped from the start and end of their keywords and parameters (as is also done inside templates).
They can be transcluded, even variables "about the current page". This is ensured by the parsing order.
Instead of magically transforming into HTML instructions, <nowiki> tags remove this magic so a magic word can itself be displayed (documented), e.g. <nowiki>{{#magic:}}</nowiki>or {{#magic:<nowiki/>}}.
Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).
