Manual:Page title

A page title is the title of a page.

It is stored in the  table.

When one is specifying a certain page by typing it into the search box, or putting it in an article as a wikilink, the input consists of a  (or no namespace, if it's mainspace) followed by a colon (optional if it's mainspace) and then the database key.

For example,  specifies the Manual: namespace and the page table database key.

The page title is case-sensitive except the first character.

You can set  to false to make the first character case-sensitive.

However it's currently impossible to make the page title completely case-insensitive (T2453).

Invalid page titles
The following are not valid as page titles:


 * Base names beginning with a lower-case letter (in any alphabet), depending on the setting of . Note that a title can be displayed with an initial lower-case letter, using <tvar|1></> or the <tvar|2>lowercase title</> template.  This does not fix every occurrence, like the history, edit, or log pages (<tvar|1>T55566</>) - or the browser address bar (<tvar|2>T63851</>), but only affects the page title on the rendered HTML page and tab/window title bars.


 * Titles starting with a lowercase letter are automatically converted to leading uppercase


 * Titles containing the characters <tvar|1> </> (which have special meanings in Wiki syntax), the non-printable ASCII characters 0–31, the "delete" character 127, or HTML character codes such as <tvar|2>&amp;amp;</>. Note that the plus sign <tvar|1>+</> is allowed in page titles, although in the default setup for MediaWiki it is not.  This is configured by setting the value of <tvar|1></> in <tvar|2></>.


 * Special characters like <tvar|1> </> are translated into their equivalent %-hex notation


 * Base names beginning with a colon (<tvar|1>:</>).


 * Base names equal to "<tvar|1>.</>" or "<tvar|2>..</>", or beginning "<tvar|3>./</>" or "<tvar|4>../</>", or containing "<tvar|5>/./</>" or "<tvar|6>/../</>", or ending "<tvar|7>/.</>" or "<tvar|8>/..</>".


 * Base names whose length exceeds 255 bytes. Be aware that non-ASCII characters may take up to four bytes in UTF-8 encoding, so the total number of characters you can fit into a title may be less than 255.


 * Titles containing "Talk:" in front of a namespace.


 * Titles with an invalid UTF-8 sequence.


 * Titles beginning with a namespace 1>Special:MyLanguage/Help:Namespace#ns-aliases</>|alias (WP:, WT:, Project:, Image:, on Wikipedia). For example, the name <tvar|1></> is not possible if <tvar|2>Project:</> is set as a namespace alias.


 * Titles beginning with a prefix that refers to another project, including other language Wikipedias, e.g. "fr:" (see 1>Special:MyLanguage/Help:Links#Interwiki_links</>|Interwiki links and <tvar|2></>). For example, an article about the album "Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!" cannot have that exact name, as the "q:" prefix leads to Wikiquote. ( The restriction includes the prefixes "w:" and "en:" that refer to English Wikipedia itself.  This self-reference restriction does not apply on all projects.  For example, Wikiquote supports titles beginning "Q:". ) A list of all these interwiki prefixes can be found on <tvar|1>Special:Interwiki</>.


 * Titles beginning with any non-standard capitalization of a namespace prefix, alias or interwiki/interlanguage prefix, or any of these with a space (underscore) before or after the colon. For example, it is not possible for a title to begin such as: "HELP:", "HeLp:", "Help :", "Help:_"


 * Titles consisting of only a namespace prefix, with nothing after the colon.


 * Titles beginning or ending with a space (underscore), or containing two or more consecutive spaces (underscores).


 * Titles containing 3 or more consecutive tildes. (<tvar|1> </>)

However it cannot contain <tvar|1>%</> followed by two hexadecimal digits (which would cause it to be converted to a single character, by percent-encoding).
 * A title can normally contain the character <tvar|1>%</>.

Note also that it is not possible for editors to create page titles beginning with the 2>Special:MyLanguage/Manual:Namespace#Built-in_namespaces</>|virtual namespace prefixes Media: and Special:.