Guide to Linking and the Mention System
The mention system exists to make your world building life on World Anvil a whole lot easier; it links your articles together so your readers will stay on your world for all eternity.
If you have started an article and you mention something that you already have an article for then the only thing you have to do is to mention it and it will appear as a link. Even if you don't have an existing article you can still mention it and it will also appear in your to-do-list.
If you have several articles with the same name but they are different templates you can search for them too, like this @person
The available templates are listed in the bbcode reference sidebar while editing an article, but they are: (character) or (person), Conflict (militaryConflict) or (conflict), Condition (condition), Document (document), Ethnicity (ethnicity), Formation (formation),Geographic location (location), Generic article (article), Item (item), Language (language), Law (law), Settlement (settlement), Building/Location (landmark), Material (material), Myth / Legend (myth) or (legend) or (prophesy), Organization (organization), Prose (prose), Profession (profession), Rank/Title (rank) or (title), Spell (spell), Species (species), Technology (technology), Tradition / Ritual (ritual) or (tradition) and Vehicle (vehicle).
Note that when you save an article with a link that points to an uncreated article, the uncreated article will be added to the to-do list automatically.
That excerpt will appear when people hover over the link. Like this;
If your article isn't created yet you can fix that by adding a tooltip like this;
Testy
Excerpts are to explain what an article is about. Tooltips can also be used for that. But it can also be used to explain words or concepts that you won't be making any articles for.
The text link is just the regular link that you get with the mentioning system. But the block link looks like the left one if you are placing them at the bottom of the vignette or a text box or like the right one if you put it in the sidebar.
Mentioning an existing article
To mention an article that you have already created, maybe with the purple button, you type an @ and add the first letters of the name of the article or the first letters of the article type. Then you click the button of the article you want to link to and it will automatically appear in the editor.Mentioning a non-existing article
You can also link an article that hasn't been created yet. To do so, simply add the link as normal, typing the full name of the future article. After the article title, type its template name between (parenthesis). Like this:Excerpts vs. Tooltips
While editing an article, go to the "Design" tab on top of the page and find the "Excerpt" text box:Block links and other tidbits
While you are editing an article, on the right sidebar below the to-do list you will find this:Table of contents
- Mentioning an existing article
- Mentioning a non-exiting article
- Excerpts vs. Tooltips
- Block links and other tidbits
FAQ
Extended mention system
Advanced linking is a Guild feature!
If you want to make use of this feature, consider supporting World Anvil.
Guild members can also link to other elements (i.e. images, maps, historical events, categories and secrets) using the mention system. The only difference is that instead of using "@", the character "[" must be used. To use it, simply type "[" followed by the name of the elements you want to link to and a drop-down will appear, just as with the article mention system.
If you want to make use of this feature, consider supporting World Anvil.
Horatio Hornblower
Is there a way to provide alt name for article link? E.g. I want to link a character, but I want to use only the first name, or I want to link a organization (e.g. Kingdom of X) but I want to use X?
Dragon
Yep, if you look at the first image you can see that I've written @world and gotten as a response at the top of the list "PatheticBarrel's World-Building Guide" Or did you mean something else?
Horatio Hornblower
Hmm, what I mean is that I have an article about some Taric LeSample. But I want to mention him as Duke LeSample for example. How can I do that? Is it possible if the article is not created yet?
Dragon
The mentioning system works on the title of the article. If you create an article for him and name it Taric LeSample and then when you want to link to him on his sister's article you write a @tar or @les and his article will appear in a list together with other articles with similar names. You click on his article and a string of text looking like this will appear:
Dragon
If you haven't created Taric's article yet but you are writing his sisters article and you want to mention him as Duke LeSample you just type (a)Duke LeSample(person) and this link will work when you create an article with that name. (if you click the link an you will automatically end up on an empty article with that name) If you are a Guild member the article will appear in the to-do-list and you can just change the title of the article later on when you have named him. If you aren't a guild member it's a lot easier to just create the article with the purple button and use the link that the button gives you and place it there and later rename the article. (it will still say Duke LeSample on his sister's article until you change it since the text within the [ ] is the name the article had when you linked it on that article. )
Horatio Hornblower
Thanks mate, cheers!
Dragon
Cheers :)