Wikipedia:Table of contents

A page can and should be divided into sections, using the section heading syntax. For each page with more than three section headings, a table of contents (TOC) is automatically generated. This page explains the syntax of these elements. For information about how to name sections or how to use sections to structure articles, please read the .

Sections are created by creating their headings, as below.

Please do not use only one equals sign on a side (=Heading=). This would cause a section heading to be as large as the page's name (title). The maximum number of equals signs is six.

Heading names of sections (including subsections) should be unique on a page. Using the same heading more than once on a page causes problems:

For registered users who use  →  → Auto-number headings, sections are numbered in the table of contents and at beginning of each section heading.

For the ordering of (appendix & footer) sections, see: .

For each page with at least four headings, a table of contents (TOC) is automatically generated from the section headings unless the magic word __NOTOC__ (with two underscores on either side of the word) is added to the article's .

Using __FORCETOC__ places the TOC immediately before the first section heading. Using __TOC__ places the TOC at the same position as this code.

Most articles have introductory text before the TOC, known as the "lead section". Although usually a section heading should immediately follow the TOC, using __TOC__ can avoid being forced having to insert a meaningless heading just to position the TOC correctly, i.e., not too low. However, if there is any text at all between the TOC and the first heading, this will cause problems with accessibility.

The TOC can, in some instances, be floated either right or left using {{}} or {{}} when it is beneficial to the layout of the article, or when the default TOC gets in the way of other elements. Before changing the default TOC to a floated TOC, consider the following guidelines:

was proposed for deletion in early July 2005, but there was no consensus on the matter. The archive of the discussion and voting regarding this may be seen at . The Manual of Style discussion can be found .

By default, the TOC includes all the headings in the page, whatever their level. When an article or project page has a very large number of subsections, it may be appropriate to hide lower-level subsections from the TOC. You can specify a limit for the lowest-level section that should be displayed using {{|n}}, where n is the number of = signs that are used on each side of the lowest-level section header that should be displayed (e.g. 3 to show ===sub-sections=== but hide ====sub-sub-sections====). The limit=n parameter can also be given to {{TOC left}} or {{TOC right}} the same way.

...
Wikipedia