Template:Hint

The Hint Template formats text inside a standard pale green box. It should be used sparingly for additional, secondary information such as "hints" that may not be relevant or essential to all users. A good use is for pointing out something that only applies in a particular case. In some cases, it may be used to break up a long instruction set formatted with Template:Instruction, or to break up plain text in a long article.
The word and colon "HINT:" (in bold) can be typed if desired as the first input, according to the context. If HINT: is included, it's suggested not to use it more than twice on the same page.

NOTE: This template should be used only for hints and other secondary information. Use Template:Instruction or Template:Advice for instruction sets or other essential/very important information that needs to be emphasized. For the current list of available templates, see Category:Templates.

To change the appearance of this template and also the Note Template, edit the note class in MediaWiki:Common.css

Usage of Hint Template

The text should be reasonably concise (preferably one or two sentences) so as not to dominate the main contents of the article. Should a longer hint be needed, consider making it a separate section, or if necessary a separate page linked to on the current page. If a second paragraph is needed in the hint, you can use ENTER on the keyboard to create one, just as in normal editing.

General usage:

{{Hint| Text to be displayed as a hint }}

Example:

Typing this:

{{Hint|'''HINT:''' If you don't see any input, make sure you have plugged in the microphone correctly.}}

will produce this:

HINT: If you don't see any input, make sure you have plugged in the microphone correctly.

Special cases:

If the text must contain the equals sign "=", use "1=" after the pipe symbol "|" thus:

{{Hint|1=The above also explains why 2 + 2 = 4.}}

If other essential symbols in the text still cause it to display incorrectly, try enclosing the text after the pipe inside <nowiki> </nowiki> tags. This solution would also work with the above example:

{{Hint|<nowiki>The above also explains why 2 + 2 = 4.</nowiki>}}

However, <nowiki> </nowiki> tags will not work if you need to use another template inside the Hint template, as they will prevent the other templates being parsed. In this case, the only solution is to precede the entire text string after the first pipe by 1=, like this:

{{Hint|1='''HINT:''' {{external|1=[http://youtube.com/results?search_query=audacity Search Youtube for Audacity]}}.}}

which produces:

HINT: Search Youtube for Audacity .

Note also that in this example the second template must itself contain the 1= prefix, as its URL contains an equals sign.