When used at the top of an article, hatnotes are placed immediately following a short description template but strictly before any other content including protection icons or maintenance tags.
For the specific order of placing hatnotes with respect to other article elements, see MOS:SECTIONORDER.
Placing hatnotes immediately after the title ensures that readers are promptly directed to related or alternative articles if they have arrived at the page unintentionally.
This permits the form and structure of hatnotes to be changed uniformly across the encyclopedia as needed, and the templates to be excluded in print.
Current style on the English Wikipedia is to italicize and to indent each note, without a bullet before the item.
A horizontal dividing line should not be placed either under a note or after the final item in a list.
The hatnote should not overload the user with extraneous information, and the content should be imparted quickly and accurately.
However, such an article may be linked if it could be expected by a significant number of readers to be at the title in question: for instance, Turkey is about the country, but many readers expect to find the article about the bird at that title; therefore, the hatnote there correctly reads which renders There should be as few hatnotes as possible.
Multiple hatnotes may however be appropriate when each serves a different purpose, such as disambiguating the title or distinguishing similar terms.
The choice of style in a given article is based on editors' preferences and on what is likely to be clearer and easier for the reader.
Dunwich (/ˈdʌnɪtʃ/) is a town in the county of Suffolk in England, the remnant of what was once a prosperous seaport and centre of the wool trade during the early middle ages, with a natural harbour formed by the mouths of the River Blyth.
They are typically used when readers have misspelled their desired title, and the error would be apparent by simply displaying the alternative term without further explanation.
In those cases, use {{about}}, {{for}} or {{other uses}} instead, as the differences in the suggested article are explained upfront without requiring the reader to click through and differentiate the terms on their own.
A monolith is a monument or natural feature, such as a mountain, consisting of a single massive stone or rock.
In many cases, the hatnote also includes a brief description of the subject of the present article, for readers' convenience: In Greek mythology, the Labyrinth was an elaborate maze-like structure constructed for King Minos of Crete and designed by the legendary artificer Daedalus to hold the Minotaur.
It is set in a society which at first appears as utopian, but is later revealed to be a dystopian one as the story progresses.
... Caprona agama, the spotted angle, is a butterfly belonging to the family Hesperiidae.
Since all words in a hatnote are italicized, the specific text will not stand out if the italics are not disabled.
}}''Caprona alida''}} Many hatnote templates found below section headers, such as {{Main}}, {{See also}}, {{Further}}, and others have label parameters to customize the italicization of the output text: {{See also|Caprona alida|label1=''Caprona alida''}} In this instance, the rendered term will stand out unitalicized.
When notes feature a trivial detail or use of a term, or links to overly specific and tendentious material, they are unwarranted.
Disambiguation hatnotes are intended to link to separate topics that could be referred to by the same title, of the article or any of its redirects.
Its existence is currently hypothetical: there is as yet no evidence of extraterrestrial life that has been widely accepted by scientists. ...
Each additional link in the hatnote besides the ambiguous or confusable topic(s) makes it more difficult to find the desired target.
In this case, the link to New Orleans, Louisiana, in the hatnote, leads to an article that is not ambiguous with the title.
A previous version of the Hurricane Katrina article contained: Hurricane Katrina, which made landfall near New Orleans, Louisiana, on August 29, 2005, was one of the most destructive and expensive tropical cyclones to hit the United States.