Wiki canonicalization is the algorithm by which the text of links (in [single] or [[double]] pair of square brackets) is converted to a URI.

• Precede URIs with "http:", "ftp:", "gopher:", "mailto:", or "news:", with no pair of brackets, to create links automatically (this is not canonicalization). This includes links to .gif, .jpg, .jpeg or .png URIs; it does not display the image inline.
• A single pair of square brackets is for an in-line link to another site. For example, [http://www.wiktionary.org/] produces this: [1] (http://www.wiktionary.org/), while [http://www.wiktionary.org/ Wiktionary] produces this: Wiktionary (http://www.wiktionary.org/).
• A double pair of square brackets creates an intra-wiki link, i.e. a link to a Ireland Information Guide article. The special syntax [[wiktionary:verb]] allows you to link to an article on another Wiki (in this case, Wiktionary's entry for verb); see InterWiki. Use Interlanguage links to create the links at the top and bottom of articles that link to the same article in another language.
  1. Whitespace is converted to underscores (e.g. the page "Star Trek" is actually located at "Star_Trek"). Multiple consecutive underscores and spaces are contracted to just one underscore.
  2. Leading or trailing whitespace/underscores are removed.
  3. Character references are replaced with their raw character (e.g. if you write "département" it will link to département).
  4. For Interwiki or Interlanguage Links, processing stops here. For other links:
     1. Illegal characters are stripped (e.g. ^)
     2. The first character is capitalised.
     3. If there is a namespace prefix (Talk:, Ireland Information Guide:, User:, etc.), the first character of the article name (what comes after the colon) is also capitalised.

Example: [[ death in   Vegas  ]] creates a link to the page Death in Vegas.

See also

• Ireland Information Guide:How to edit a page#Links, URLs, images
• Wiki Text formatting rules
• Usemod text formatting rules
• HTML tags