Template:Distinguish

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Description

The "distinguish" template produces a hatnote to point out to our readers the existence of one or more articles whose title(s) is, or are, similar to the page in question. It is used in cases where the distinction between the titles is generally obvious and does not need further explanation.

For those cases where an explanation is required, please use the templates {{For}} and {{About}}. For use on category pages, the corresponding template is {{Category distinguish}}.

Usage

Here is an example of its standard usage (used, for purposes of this example, with the placeholder article "Foo"; the following could be placed on a theoretical article named "Foo (song)", or perhaps one named "Fou" or "Fu"):

{{distinguish|Foo}} →

Not to be confused with Foo.

This hatnote can be used to distinguish the topic from multiple other topics:

{{distinguish|Foo|Bar}} →

Not to be confused with Foo or Bar.

{{distinguish|Foo|Bar|Baz}} →

Not to be confused with Foo, Bar, or Baz.

It can also be used to customize the text that will appear. You may do this using the template's |text= parameter. For example, from the Wikipedia article on Phobos (mythology), an article about a Greek god that is also the name of one of the moons of Mars, and where the word "Phoebus", quite similar to "Phobos", has an altogether different meaning. Note that for ease of understanding, terms with parenthetical disambiguation should usually be piped:

{{distinguish|text = the Martian moon [[Phobos (moon)|Phobos]], or Phoebus, an epithet of the Greek god [[Apollo]]}} →

Not to be confused with the Martian moon Phobos, or Phoebus, an epithet of the Greek god Apollo.

Note that a final period is automatically added at the end of the sentence, and that only one blue link is used per disambiguated topic (i.e, do not type ...an [[epithet]] of the [[Greek]] god [[Apollo]].

It may also be appropriate to place a similar hatnote on the article for Phobos (moon) to distinguish it from the article on Phobos (mythology) and the article on Apollo, though it is probably unnecessary to place yet another hatnote on the article on Apollo, since most readers searching for "Apollo Phoebus" will get there by simply typing "Apollo" in the Wikipedia search box.

When the target is a disambiguation page, display of the parentheses may be avoided by escaping the vertical bar using the magic word {{!}}:

Y{{distinguish|Crossfire (disambiguation){{!}}Crossfire}} →

Not to be confused with Crossfire.

The escape is necessary, otherwise the template will read the next text as another topic:

N{{distinguish|Crossfire (disambiguation)|Crossfire}} →

Not to be confused with Crossfire (disambiguation) or Crossfire.

When to use

This hatnote is generally used when readers have misspelled their desired title, and the error would be apparent by simply displaying the alternative term without further explanation. For example, consider a reader looking for the punctuation mark who instead ends up at coma:

Coma

Not to be confused with comma.

Readers are presumed to recognize that they actually wanted comma by merely looking at the spelling, and this case generally requires no further explanation.

However, {{distinguish}} is not suitable when the difference is not readily apparent without additional details. Consider a reader looking for a game they believe is named Reversi:

N Reversi

Not to be confused with Reversis.

In the above hatnote, it is not generally apparent how the suggested Reversis is different from Reversi, which is also a game.

In this case you should use {{about}} instead of {{distinguish}}. The difference is to provide explanation upfront without requiring the reader to click through and differentiate the terms on their own.

Y Reversi

This article is about the board game. For the card game, see Reversis.

{{Distinguish}} should only be used when the ambiguity exists for a portion of the readership that is sufficient to warrant a hatnote. Care should be taken to avoid trivial uses.

TemplateData

This is the TemplateData for this template used by TemplateWizard, VisualEditor and other tools. See a monthly parameter usage report for Template:Distinguish in articles based on its TemplateData.

TemplateData for Distinguish

A hatnote used when there is an ambiguity in an article's title.

Template parameters[Edit template data]

This template prefers inline formatting of parameters.

Parameter		Description	Type	Status
Name of article	1	Name of article that you want to link to	Page name	suggested
Optional additional article to link (2)	2	Optional additional article to link	Page name	optional
Optional additional article to link (3)	3	Optional additional article to link	Page name	optional
Optional additional article to link (4)	4	Optional additional article to link	Page name	optional
Custom text	text	Custom message in wikitext; e.g. "[[foo]] and [[Bar (computer science)|bar]]" produces "Not to be confused with [[foo]] and [[Bar (computer science)|bar]]."	String	optional
Self reference	selfref	If set, marks note as being a self reference, to not be shown when content is reused	Boolean	optional

Redirects

• {{Confused}}
• {{Confuse}}
• {{Misspelling}}
• {{Nottobeconfusedwith}}
• {{Ntbcw}}

See also

• {{About}}
• {{Category distinguish}}
• {{For}}
• {{Redirect}}
• {{R from misspelling}}

The above documentation is transcluded from Template:Distinguish/doc. (edit | history)
Editors can experiment in this template's sandbox (create | mirror) and testcases (create) pages.
Add categories to the /doc subpage. Subpages of this template.