Usage

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This template is to help facilitate the displaying of variable names (in mathematics, computer source code, wikimarkup in template documentation, metasyntactic variables, etc.) with the semantically correct <var>...</var> tags, which also renders the variable in italics, as is customary. Alternately, editors may use <var>...</var> tags directly in Wikitext to produce identical output.

The use of <var> or {{var}} is preferred to simply italicizing for many reasons, including accessibility, separation of presentation and content, semantic Web, and metadata. In XHTML and HTML, the <var> element has semantic meaning, while simple italicization does not. This template provides a tiny hint of kerning to compensate for the italicization and enhance readability.

"Variable" in this sense may include arbitrary or unknown names or terms, examples of human input, arithmetical variables in equations, etc. This template (and the underlying XHTML) are generally not used if MediaWiki's <math>...</math> tags (or any other stand-alone mathematical markup) are being used.

At times, you may wish to use a serif font. This is especially true when attempting to render single-letter variables like "I" (upper-case "i") and "l" (lower-case "L"), since they are nearly indistinguishable (if at all). In such situations, use the {{varserif}} template instead of {{var}}, to make them more distinguishable, like these serif examples: I, l.

Examples

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Wikitext HTML Renders as
{{var|username}}
<var>username</var>

username

Markup Renders as
<var>username</var>

username

{{var|username}}

username

The commandline should read: {{samp|%}} {{kbd|1=ssh {{var|hostname}}}}<br />(where {{var|hostname}} is the IP address or ...)<br />If it is correct, press {{key press|Enter}}

The commandline should read: % ssh hostname
(where hostname is the IP address or ...)
If it is correct, press ↵ Enter

in this equation, let {{var|x}}{{=}}1 and {{var|y}}{{=}}120 ...

in this equation, let x=1 and y=120 ...

{{para|accessdate|{{var|todays_date}}}}

|accessdate=todays_date

TemplateData

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This is the TemplateData for this template used by TemplateWizard, VisualEditor and other tools. See a monthly parameter usage report for Template:Var in articles based on its TemplateData.

TemplateData for Var

Marks text as an HTML variable

Template parameters

ParameterDescriptionTypeStatus
variable1

no description

Linerequired
classclass

no description

Stringoptional
IDid

no description

Stringoptional
CSS stylestyle

no description

Stringoptional
languagelang

no description

Example
c++
Stringoptional
HTML title (hovertext)title

no description

Stringoptional

See also

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  • {{mvar}} which makes the argument italic and formats as mathematics
  • {{math}} which formats its argument as mathematics
  • {{bigmath}}, the same as {{math}} but makes it bigger