Wiktionary:Images

This is a Wiktionary policy, guideline or common practices page. Specifically it is a policy think tank, working to develop a formal policy.

Policies – Entries: CFI - EL - NORM - NPOV - QUOTE - REDIR - DELETE. Languages: LT - AXX. Others: BLOCK - BOTS - VOTES.

Shortcuts:
WT:IMG
WT:IMAGE

Images are one of the many types of media used on Wiktionary and may be photos, drawings, diagrams, among others. These should be uploaded to our sister project Wikimedia Commons under a free license.

Choosing files

The purpose of images is to provide context to a given entry. Images should be significant and relevant, not primarily decorative.

Images should serve as an illustrative aid on top of the definition. Use images with the best quality possible.
While Wiktionary is not censored, it is recommended to avoid primarily offensive images, such as those involving sexual and pornographic matters, unless its inclusion would make the entry more informative, relevant, or accurate.

Audio files

The tweet of lovebirds

Terms that denote noises, onomatopoeia, musical concepts, and so forth may be illustrated with an audio example. These are best used in cases where the audio helps to elucidate the meaning of the term itself – not every noise-making gadget needs a recording of the sound it makes.

Layout

Basic syntax

For help and tutorials on image syntax, see Wikipedia:Images.

Images and other files are inserted using the image markup. A basic example is shown below, with the filename, alt text, and a caption:

[[File:Sarlyk Yak2.jpg|thumb|alt=A yak in a mountainous landscape looking at the camera over a body of water|A picture of a {{m|en|yak}} may be informative for the reader looking up its definition.]]

Placement

Image thumbnails are by default placed on the right, ideally after the header, before other inline templates (such as headwords), and after box templates (such as {{etymon}} and sister-project links). The forced-resizing is strongly discouraged on Wiktionary, as it overrides user preferences, instead prefer using the upright parameter.

Preferably, place the image after the language header, the etymology header, or the part of speech header, depending on the scope of its meaning. For example, bank has two different images under each etymology (for the type of institution and the land body).

Multiple images under the same header may be added using the {{img}} template.

Captions

A fruit bat (etymology 1)

A player swinging a baseball bat (etymology 2)

Captions are recommended to be written in the entry language and should be kept short in length, mentioning the lemma word and providing additional context.

The lemma word should be in boldface (or highlighted for scripts that lack a proper boldface). Captions containing only the lemma word (optionally plus parenthetical text) should generally start with lowercase (or follow the lemma's capitalization) and without boldface.
Most captions are not complete sentences, but merely sentence fragments, which should not end with a period or full stop. If any complete sentence occurs in a caption, then all sentences, and any sentence fragments, in that caption should end with a period or full stop.
Use the {{senseno}} template to identify which sense of a polysemic word is depicted (see stock car for an example). Do not manually type in sense numbers, as it is easy for such numbers to fall out of sync with the rest of the entry.
Captions in non-English languages should be wrapped in the template {{lang}} for accessibility with screen readers. Translations between the entry language English may be given with {{uxi}} and {{coi}}.

Alternatively, for languages which are not considered appropriate to provide captions in, such as not sufficiently documented extinct languages, the caption may be given directly in English, without the explicit need to mention the lemma.

Accessibility

See also: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Accessibility/Alternative text for images.

Alternative text may be supplied to images in order to convey the essential information as the image in situations where it may not be available to the reader.

Non-free content

See also: Wiktionary:Non-free content criteria.

Non-free media is allowed in special cases where it would significantly increases readers' understanding of the topic whereas there exists no free equivalent.