Template:Distinguish

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Description

It renders a hatnote to remind readers about the existence of one or more articles or elements whose title(s) is/are similar to this page. It is used in cases where the distinction between the title(s) is/are obvious that it does not need further explanation.

For cases where an explanation is required, use {{For}} and {{About}}. For use on category pages, the corresponding template is {{Category distinguish}}.

Usage

It is the standard usage:

{{Distinguish|Foo}} →

Not to be confused with Foo.

This hatnote can be used to distinguish from multiple articles:

{{Distinguish|Foo|Bar}} →

Not to be confused with Foo or Bar.

{{Distinguish|Foo|Bar|Gaz}} →

Not to be confused with Foo, Bar, or Gaz.

You may customize the text too. Use |text=. For example:

{{Distinguish|text = custom [[text]], or [[foo]], a common example term}} →

Not to be confused with custom text, or foo, a common example term.

When to use

This hatnote is generally used when readers have misspelled their desired title, and the error would be apparent by simply displaying the alternative term without further explanation. For example, consider a reader looking for the punctuation mark who instead ends up at coma:

Coma

Not to be confused with Comma.

Readers are presumed to recognize that they actually wanted comma by merely looking at the spelling, and this case generally requires no further explanation.

However, {{distinguish}} is not suitable when the difference is not readily apparent without additional details. Consider a reader looking for a game they believe is named Reversi:

N Reversi

Not to be confused with Reversis.

In the above hatnote, it is not generally apparent how the suggested Reversis is different from Reversi, which is also a game.

In this case you should use {{about}} instead of {{distinguish}}. The difference is to provide explanatation upfront without requiring the reader to click through and differentiate the terms on their own.

Y Reversi

This template is about the board game. For the card game, see Reversis.

{{Distinguish}} should only be used when the ambiguity exists for a portion of the readership that is sufficient to warrant a hatnote. Care should be taken to avoid trivial uses.

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 Distinguish

A hatnote used when there is an ambiguity in an article's title.

Template parameters[Edit template data]

This template prefers inline formatting of parameters.

Parameter		Description	Type	Status
Name of article	1	Name of article that you want to link to	Page name	suggested
Optional additional article to link (2)	2	Optional additional article to link	Page name	optional
Optional additional article to link (3)	3	Optional additional article to link	Page name	optional
Optional additional article to link (4)	4	Optional additional article to link	Page name	optional
Custom text	text	Custom message in wikitext; e.g. "[[foo]] and [[bar]]" produces "Not to be confused with [[foo]] and [[bar]]."	String	optional
Self reference	selfref	If set, marks note as being a self reference, to not be shown when content is reused	Boolean	optional

The above documentation is transcluded from Template:Distinguish/doc. (edit | history)
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