Editing Help:Edit summary (section)

{{hatnote|See {{slink|Wikipedia:Editing policy|Be helpful: explain}} for the relevant Wikipedia policy.}}
{{hatnote|See [[WP:Edit summary legend]] if you are already familiar with this page.}}
{{hatnote|"WP:ES" redirects here. For encyclopedic style, see {{slink|Wikipedia:Writing better articles|Information style and tone}}.}}
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{{nutshell|When editing, be sure to summarize your contributions.}}
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An '''edit summary''' is a ''brief'' explanation of an [[Help:editing|edit]] to a Wikipedia page. Summaries help other editors by (a) providing a reason for the edit, (b) saving the time to open up the edit to find out what it's all about, and (c) providing information about the edit on [[Help:Diff|diff]] pages and lists of changes (such as [[Help:Page history|page histories]] and [[Help:Watching pages|watchlists]]).