en:Help:Self link

{{about|pages that link to themselves|the guideline on articles referring to Wikipedia itself|Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Self-references to avoid#Writing about Wikipedia itself}}

{{Wikipedia how-to|WP:SELFLINK}}{{Linking and page manipulation|linking and diffs}}

A self link is the use of a link code with the page itself as target. It does not produce an actual link, but a non-clickable bold text (the "self-link format"). However, with the preference setting "Link underlining", this text is underlined. This can be suppressed putting the following in your relevant personal css page:

.mw-selflink { text-decoration: none !important; }

Live examples (hence depending on your settings):

Self links are usually undesirable, except for:

  • Within navigation templates, where the self-link-produced boldface helps locate the article within the template
  • Self-links to a section, such as this link, which links to the section below.

Related changes feature

A self link for use with the "Related changes" feature only works if the link is to an existing or non-existing section. If it cannot be made useful as a link to a section, use a piped link with a blank space as label, e.g. , showing up as " ".

See also