Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lead section

The lead section, lede, or introduction of a Wikipedia article is the section before the first heading. The table of contents, if displayed, appears between the lead section and the first headline.

The lead should be capable of standing alone as a concise overview of the article, establishing context, summarizing the most important points, explaining why the subject is interesting or notable, and briefly describing its notable controversies, if there are any. The emphasis given to material in the lead should roughly reflect its importance to the topic according to reliable, published sources. The lead should not "tease" the reader by hinting at but not explaining important facts that will appear later in the article. It should contain up to four paragraphs, should be carefully sourced as appropriate, and should be written in a clear, accessible style so as to invite a reading of the full article.

Bold title

The article's subject should be mentioned at the earliest natural point in the prose in the first sentence, and should appear in bold face. Avoid links in the bold title words. The name of the subject is usually identical to the page title, although it may appear in a slightly different form from that used as the title, and it may include variations. For example, in the article "United Kingdom":

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (usually shortened to the United Kingdom or UK) occupies part of the British Isles in northwestern Europe ...

See also: Wikipedia:Manual of Style § Article titles

Sections and table of contents

Although the lead section is considered a section, it has no section heading; an "Introduction" headline should not be added at the beginning of an article. When displayed, the optional table of contents generally appears between the lead section and the first section heading (though this can be changed, see WP:TOC).

Because editing the lead section can be cumbersome in huge articles, (because there is no edit link for this section), a trick allows editing the lead section separately from the rest of the article: Click "edit" for any section and , in the resulting URL, replace the trailing &section=n with &section=0. There are also some user-written scripts that enable you to edit section 0, such as Edit Top.

Establish context

The first paragraph needs to establish the context in which the topic is being considered, by supplying the set of circumstances or facts that surround it. For example:

• Introduction (essay): "In an essay, an introduction is..." or,
• Introduction (music): "In music, the introduction is..."

It is preferable to keep the number of links preceding the bolded title as small as possible, in order not to overwhelm the reader.

Provide an accessible overview

Next to establishing context, the lead section should briefly summarize the most important points covered in an article in such a way that it can stand on its own as a concise version of the article (e.g. when a related article gives a brief overview of the topic in question). It is even more important here than for the rest of the article that the text be accessible, and consideration should be given to creating interest in reading the whole article (see news style and summary style). The first sentence in the lead section should be a concise definition of the topic unless that definition is implied by the title (such as 'History of …' and similar titles).

In general, specialized terminology should be avoided in an introduction. Where uncommon terms are essential to describing the subject, they should be placed in context, briefly defined, and linked. The subject should be placed in a context with which many readers could be expected to be familiar. For example, rather than giving the latitude and longitude of a town, it is better to state that it is the suburb of some city, or perhaps that it provides services for the farm country of xyz county. Readers should not be dropped into the middle of the subject from the first word—they should be eased into it.

Relative emphasis

In general, the relative emphasis given to material in the lead should reflect its relative importance to the subject according to reliable sources. Significant information should not appear in the lead if it is not covered in the remainder of the article, although specific facts, such as birthdates, titles, or scientific designations will often appear in the lead only. This should not be taken to exclude information from the lead, but to include it in both the lead and body: in a well-constructed article, the relative emphasis given to information in the lead will be reflected in the rest of the text. Do not tease the reader by hinting at startling facts without describing them. Avoid lengthy paragraphs and over-specific descriptions.

When writing about controversies in a biography neither suppress notable information nor overwhelm the subject with negative material; always pay scrupulous attention to sources. Write clinically and let the facts speak for themselves.

Leads for poor articles

One difficult content improvement situation is constructing a lead for an article that is in generally poor condition. The suggestions of this guideline are based on the assumption of reasonably well-written articles. We do not want a "concise overview" of an article that is stub-like, unwikified or unreferenced. Similarly, relative emphasis in the lead should not reflect the body if the body is haphazard or missing critical information.

Get the lead right first. Construct an introduction for the article as if it were a good encyclopedia page, even if it has not yet arrived at that point. The lead is the first thing the readers sees and, sometimes, all that they read. At the same time, improving the lead and ignoring the remainder is discouraged. Because introductory summations in any information source should not introduce significant material that does not appear in the main text, editors adding new material to the lead should be prepared to add and source it in greater detail in the body.

Length

The appropriate length of the lead section depends on the total length of the article. As a general guideline, the lead should be no longer than four paragraphs. The following suggestion may be useful:

< 15,000 characters	around 32 kilobytes	> 30,000 characters
one or two paragraphs	two or three paragraphs	three or four paragraphs

For the planned Wikipedia 1.0 (a static version of Wikipedia distributed on CD, DVD, or paper) one recommendation (not currently implemented) is that the articles will consist of just the lead section of the web version. Summary style and news style can help create a concise intro that works as a stand-alone article.

Citations

The lead must conform to Wikipedia's core policy of verifiability. Contentious material about living persons and quotations should be cited in the lead if they appear there. For other material in the lead which is likely to be challenged, there are two schools of thought. The first school says that since the lead summarizes the main text (which will be referenced), supplying citations in the lead as well is an unnecessary duplication (Big Bang is an example). The second school says that the lead should be cited independently of the main text (Sikhism is an example).

See also

• Wikipedia:Guide to writing better articles
• Wikipedia:Accessibility