Editing Help:Redirect (section)

==Syntax==
{{Shortcut|Wikipedia:Hard redirect}}
A page is treated as a redirect page if its [[WP:wikitext|wikitext]] begins with <code>#REDIRECT</code> followed by a valid [[Help:Link|wikilink]] or [[Help:Interwiki|interwikilink]]. A space is usually left before the link. (Note that some alternative capitalizations of "REDIRECT" are possible.)

Note that a redirect works as intended (takes the reader directly to the target page) only if the link is to an existing normal page (not a [[Help:special page|special page]]) on the same project (English Wikipedia). In other cases soft redirects are often used – see [[#Soft redirects|below]].

Examples:
* <code><nowiki>#REDIRECT [[France]]</nowiki></code> (redirects to the [[France]] article)
* <code><nowiki>#REDIRECT [[France#History]]</nowiki></code> (redirects to the "History" section of the [[France#History]] article)
* <code><nowiki>#REDIRECT [[fr:France]]</nowiki></code> (appears as a redirect to the [[France]] article on French Wikipedia, but does not work as a true redirect)

Any text appearing after the redirect link is ignored in the display, but may be used to add categories, interwiki links, comments, etc.

Note that the redirect link must be explicit – it cannot contain [[Help:Magic word|magic words]], [[WP:template|templates]], etc.

When redirecting to a [[Help:category|category]] page, prefix the target pagename with a colon to prevent the redirect from showing up in the category. (Redirects from one category page to another should use soft redirects – see [[#Soft redirects|below]].) Redirects to [[Help:image|image]] pages also require the colon.