This template employs intricate features of template syntax.
You are encouraged to familiarise yourself with its setup and parser functions before editing the template. If your edit causes unexpected problems, please undo it quickly, as this template may appear on a large number of pages.
You can conduct experiments, and should test all major changes, in either this template's sandbox, the general template sandbox, or your user space before changing anything here.
This is a table-of-contents replacement for alphabetical lists within mainspace articles. The template has all features of other TOC templates, such as optional "Top" "0–9" sections, and allows selecting other sections.
name=: change the heading to an alternative name instead of "Contents", or hide it completely by entering name=no
side=yes: put the "Contents" heading on the left side with a colon, instead of the top without one
center=yes: float ToC centered in the horizontal middle of the page, instead of floated left
right=yes: align the ToC horizontally to the right of the page (may require <br style="clear:right;" /> after it, depending on page layout), instead of floated left (this parameter is mutually exclusive with the "center" option above, and should be used sparingly and with good reason)
nobreak=yes: no linebreak between the A-B-C-etc. stuff and the See also/References/etc. stuff (note: does not affect the heading; use side= for that)
top=yes: enable the "Top" link; this is only useful if this copy of the ToC is a secondary ToC not at the top of the page, e.g. in the middle of a long glossary. (Every rendered page has a hidden <a name="top" id="top"></a> above the sitenotice which makes this link work without having to do anything but enable it in the template.)
num=yes: enable the "0–9" link for numeric entries section (create a heading of ==0–9== for the link to work)
sym=yes: enable the "!$@" link for symbolic entries section
symnum=yes: enable the "!–9" link for combined symbolic and numeric entries section (create a heading of ==!–9== for the link to work)
letters=no: suppresses the "A", "B", ..., "Z" entries.
pre1 to pre8: list up to 8 extra section headers before (pre-list) the "ABCDEF" list. These appear as [[#pre1|pre1]].
pre1name to pre8name: modifies the way the pre-list section headers appear: [[#pre1|pre1name]]
pre1link to pre8link: modifies the targets of the pre-list headers: [[pre1link|pre1]].
prebreak=yes: set break-line after all pre-list headers
custom1 to custom8: add up to 8 extra "custom" sections after the "ABCDEF" list. These appear as [[#custom1|custom1]].
custom1name to custom8name: modifies the way the custom section headers appear: [[#custom1|custom1name]]
custom1link to custom8link: modifies the targets of the custom sections: [[custom1link|custom1]]. Use this only for linking to another page. Use sparingly! About the only legitimate use for this is connecting the sub-pages of multi-page articles, like long lists that have been broken up. Do not repurpose the ToC as a makeshift navbox.
seealso=yes: enable link to the "See also" section
notesfirst=yes: enable link to the "Notes" section, but placed before "References"; do not use with notes (and do observe that it is plural)
refs=yes: enable link to the "References" section (observe that it is plural)
notes=yes: enable link to the "Notes" section (observe that it is plural)
further=yes: enable link to the "Further reading" section
extlinks=yes: enable link to the "External links" section
a= through z=: individually disable particular letters that have no entries. Use with caution and check regularly to make sure that new entries do not require the removal of these parameters. Can also be used to create range links, e.g. "X-Z". (See following section for more detailed documentation of this feature.)
allowtoc=yes: disables the hiding of the automatically-generated table of contents that __NOTOC__ usually hides. (Since this template's purpose is usually to replace the existing table of contents, this functionality is usually only necessary on Wikipedia guideline pages that use this template in examples.)
Any letter can be omitted (i.e. when it has no entries in the list) by specifying it as a lowercase blank parameter, e.g. {{Compact ToC |side=yes |j=|q=}}:
Note: It is often better to create an empty placeholder span (e.g. <span id="Q"></span>) where the letter's heading would be in the page if it existed, since in most cases it is quite possible that it will come to exist in the future. Using the span-id avoids confusing readers who might not realize the TOC-template has skipped some letters.
The letter-assignment feature can also be used to create range links, e.g. {{Compact ToC |side=yes |x=[[#X–Z|X–Z]] |y=|z=}}:
The feature can also be used (very tediously) for linking to sub-articles (e.g. long lists that have been split into multiple pages): {{Compact ToC |side=yes |name=[[Articlename]] |n=[[Articlename (N–Z)#N|N]] |o=[[Articlename (N–Z)#O|O]] |... |z=[[Articlename (N–Z)#Z|Z]]}}
The optional parameters pre1, pre2, ...pre8 and custom1, custom2, ...custom8 allow up to 16 other section headers to be listed before or after the "ABCDEF" list:
Headers can be listed before & after "ABCDEF" using pre1 and custom1 : {{Compact ToC |center=yes |top=yes |pre1=Scope of list |pre2=Abbreviations used |prebreak=yes |custom1=Popular entries |custom2=Excluded entries |notes=yes|seealso=yes}}
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