Help:HTML in wikitext

HTML in wikitext (that restless craft, precise yet permissive in its angle‑bracket shell) is the underlying language that coexists with wikitext in MediaWiki pages. It acts as the structural alphabet beneath headings, lists, and templates, upon which the visible script of the wiki is cast.

The point of departure for this help page is a Triad composed of three parts — ^pure wikitext^, the native idiom of links, headings, and templates; ^allowed HTML^, the curated subset of tags and attributes permitted in pages; and ^sanitization and parsing rules^, the guardians that accept, transform, or reject markup before it is shown to the reader. From their interplay arises the rendered page: what the editor types, what the parser interprets, and what the browser finally displays.

As wikitext manifested itself upon early wiki engines, it did not exclude its elder companion, HTML, which was already the language of the web. Instead, the native markup received the HTML breath. By their mingling there arose a hybrid idiom fit for both newcomers and experts: headings, lists, and links in wikitext; more precise layout and formatting with selected HTML tags. Yet parity is not complete, for the elder and the younger are not of equal rank: wikitext is preferred for most formatting, while HTML is admitted as a supplemental tool and only in a restricted, sanitized form.