Template:Var

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Template documentation

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Usage

This template is to help facilitate the displaying of variable names (in mathematics, computer source code, wikimarkup in template documentation, metasyntactic variables, etc.) with the semantically correct <var>...</var> tags, which also renders the variable in italics, as is customary. This method is preferred to simply italicizing for many reasons, including accessibility, separation of presentation and content, semantic Web, and metadata; In XHTML and HTML, the <var> element has semantic meaning, while simple italicization does not. This template provides a tiny hint of kerning to compensate for the italicization and enhance readability.

"Variable" in this sense may include arbitrary or unknown names or terms, examples of human input, arithmetical variables in equations, etc. This template (and the underlying XHTML) are generally not used if MediaWiki's <math>...</math> tags (or any other stand-alone mathematical markup) are being used.

Examples

Example

Template:Tlxb

outputs the following HTML:

<var>username</var>

which renders as:

username

Note that on the screen or in print, this renders as simple italicization, as does ''username'' (using pairs of apostrophes) or <i>username</i> (using HTML), yet it carries more semantic meaning than either of these methods.

At times, you may wish to use a serif font. This is especially true when attempting to render single-letter variables like "I" (upper-case "i") and "l" (lower-case "L"), since they are nearly indistinguishable (if at all). In such situations, use the {{varserif}} template instead of {{var}}, to make them more distinguishable, like these serif examples: I, l.

More examples

The HTML code: {{block indent|{{tag|var|content=username}}}} renders as: {{block indent|{{var|username}}}}

TemplateData

This is the  TemplateData for this template used by TemplateWizard,  VisualEditor and other tools. Click here to see a monthly parameter usage report for this template based on this TemplateData.

TemplateData for Var

<templatedata> { "params": { "1": { "label": "variable", "type": "line", "required": true }, "class": { "type": "string" }, "id": { "label": "ID", "type": "string" }, "style": { "label": "CSS style", "type": "string" }, "lang": { "label": "language", "example": "c++", "type": "string" }, "title": { "label": "HTML title (hovertext)", "type": "string" } }, "description": "Marks text as an HTML variable" } </templatedata>

See also

• {{mvar}} which makes the argument italic and formats as mathematics
• {{math}} which formats its argument as mathematics
• {{bigmath}}, the same as {{math}} but makes it bigger

Semantic markup templates

{{{content}}}