Editing Help:How To Edit Pages (section)

== Minor Edits ==

A check to the minor edit box signifies that only superficial differences exist between the current and previous version: typo corrections, formatting and presentational changes, rearranging of text without modifying content, et cetera. A minor edit is a version that the editor believes requires no review and could never be the subject of a dispute. An edit marked as minor appears on the right of a lower case, bolded "m" character (m) in the history.

By contrast, a major edit is a version that should be reviewed to confirm that it is consensual to all concerned editors. Therefore, any change that affects the meaning of an article is not minor, even if the edit is a single word, for example, the addition or removal of "not", which can vastly change the meaning of a sentence, paragraph, section or article.

The distinction between major and minor edits is significant because editors may choose to ignore minor edits when reviewing recent changes; logged-in users might even set their preferences to not display them. If there is any chance that another editor might dispute a change, it is best to not mark the edit as minor.


'''When to mark an edit as minor:'''

* Spelling corrections
* Simple formatting (e.g., capitalization, punctuation, or properly adding italics to non-English words like et cetera)
* Formatting that doesn't change the meaning of the page (e.g. adding horizontal lines, splitting one paragraph into two—where this is not contentious)
* Obvious factual errors (e.g., changing 1873 to 1973, where the event in question clearly took place in the latter 20th century)
* Fixing layout errors
* Adding and correcting wiki links
* Removing vandalism and graffiti

[[Category:Help]]