pWiki is using simple formatting rules to translate wiki files.

The pWiki translator knows 5 kinds of paragraphs :

| list_paragraph | all lines start with asterix or dash |
| table_paragraph | all lines start and end by a bar |
| verbatim_paragraph | all lines are intended by whitespace |
| command_paragraph | a single line starting with an equal sign |
| ordinary_paragraph | blocked text |

Wikiness is defined the following autolink patterns :

- words surrounded by [] marks
- words with embedded underscore, dash or slash in it 
- words with embedded capital letters

