Help:Magic Words

Magic words are strings of text that MediaWiki associates with a return value or function, such as time, site details, or page names. This page explains only the standard magic words; for a technical reference, see Manual:Magic words.

There are three general types of magic words:


 * Behavior switches: these are usually written as uppercase words surrounded by double underscores, e.g..
 * Variables: these are uppercase words surrounded by double braces, e.g. . As such, they look a lot like templates.
 * Parser functions: these take parameters and are either of the form   or  , e.g. . See also Help:Extension:ParserFunctions and Extension:Scribunto.

Variables and parser functions can use subst:, just like templates. Page-dependent magic words will affect or return data about the current page (by default), even if the word is added through a transcluded template or included system message.