Notability Statements summarize a notable person's significance for history or genealogy. This page explains how and when to use {{Notability}} to produce a Notability Statement.
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What is a Notability Statement?
A Notability Statement summarizes the person's significance for history or genealogy.
Statements appear on certain profiles directly below the Biography headline, like this:
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Statements are placed using a special formatting template named {{Notability}}. This template:
- Formats the appearance of the statement.
- Identifies the profile as a Notable Connection.
- Categorizes the profile as a Notable.
How to use {{Notability}}
Read the usage rules below before adding the {{Notability}} template to a profile.
To use it, add text like this directly below the Biography headline, above any Profile Stickers, text, or other elements:
{{Notability
|category=Holocaust Notables
|text=Anne Frank is renowned for telling the story of the Holocaust through the eyes of a young Jewish girl hiding from Nazi persecution; she wrote in her diary from 12 June 1942 to 1 August 1944, and it was published after her death.
}}
Entering a category is always recommended. There are two categorization options:
- Regional: For notable categorization by region, you only need to enter[1] a country name, Canadian province, English or Welsh county, or US state. For example:
- category=South Korea places the profile in Category:South Korea, Notables
- category=Yorkshire places the profile in Category:Yorkshire, Notables
- Topical: For any non-regional category, such as African-American Notables, or any category that combines a region and topic, such as Australia, Notables in Science, enter the exact category name as it appears in the notables category tree.[2] For example:
- category=Islamic Notables places the profile in Category:Islamic Notables
- category=Australia, Notables in Science places the profile in Category:Australia, Notables in Science
After adding {{Notability}}, it is a good idea to check its appearance on the profile and review the categories at the bottom of the profile. If a category appears in red, see Category Creation.
How does {{Notability}} relate to {{Notables Sticker}}?
The {{Notables Sticker}} was used for some of the same purposes described above prior to April 2026. It is now deprecated. It continues to function for its original purposes but should not be placed on new profiles. Existing profiles should be updated over time to use {{Notability}} instead.
Usage Rules
Profiles that should have a Notability Statement
Notability Statements should only be used on profiles:
- identified as notables using Wikipedia's guidelines for notability, or
- identified by WikiTree Projects and Sub-Projects as people of great significance for genealogy, e.g. close relatives of notables, "gateway ancestors," etc.
{{Notability}} should not be used on any other profiles.
Position of the template
The {{Notability}} template should be placed directly below the Biography headline, above any Profile Stickers.
See Help:Biographies for the recommended order of all elements.
Contents of Notability Statements
The statement should summarize the person's significance for history or genealogy.
- Statements should be written in complete sentences, not sentence fragments.
- They should generally not be longer than two sentences or exceed 350 characters. The template enforces a limit.
- They should be written in the same language as the biography in which they appear. Profiles with biographies in multiple languages may have multiple Notability Statements.
- They must be original, not copied from another website. Although our statements often mirror those on Wikipedia, they must not be exact copies.
- They should begin with the person's name, e.g. "Benjamin Franklin was ...".
- Unlike WikiTree's formal name fields, the name should be the form by which the person is most commonly known in modern popular culture. For example, "John Wayne was ..." instead of "Marion Robert Morrison was ...".
- Birth and death dates should not appear parenthetically after the person's name, e.g. "(1706-1790)." Dates should not be included in statements at all unless they are significant for the person's notability.
- They should not have source citations. Sources for included facts should be cited elsewhere.
- They should not include any reference to a descendant or relative of the person, unless this relationship is the source of the person's notability. For example, a grandparent of a US president could be considered notable by the US Presidents Project based on this relationship. Statements should never mention a living person unless the person is a Living Notable.
- By summarizing a person's notability, they may implicitly explain why a profile is managed by a project, but statements should not explicitly mention a project. Project identification is the function of a Project Box.
- They are not for disambiguation. This is done with the {{Easily Confused}} Navigation Box. Statements are also not to be used for {{Hold Request}}s or any other purposes beyond summarizing the person's notability.
- They may include contextual links. These should not be bulleted or separated from the text in any way.
- Formatting is done with the template. Statements should not be in bold and should not be fully italicized. There should be no indentation, centering, color, images, or other styling. There should be no hard returns or new paragraphs within the statement.
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You do not need to include ", Notables" for regional categorization. This will be appended automatically. However, you can include the full category name. For example:
- category=Texas and category=Texas, Notables both place the profile in Category:Texas, Notables.
- ↑ Categorization with the {{Notability}} template does not work if the category name does not contain the word "Notables." If you want to add a category such as England, Authors, use conventional category tags.
