Editing in GitHub

If you're not familiar with how to edit Markdown through GitHub, start with our Intro to GitHub and , external,digital.gov's Using GitHub for Content Creation.

• Click the Edit this page link at the very bottom of whichever page you want to edit. This will bring you to GitHub with the page you selected already loaded into an editor window. This is a plaintext editor.
• Make your changes. For more information about how to author Handbook content, refer back to the Making your updates section of the intro page.
• At the bottom of the page, you will have an opportunity to provide some text describing this edit. This will be used as part of the default description text when you open your pull request (PR) in the next step. You may leave it blank if you wish as you will have a chance to edit the PR text directly.
• Make sure Create a new branch for this commit and start a pull request is selected. Check the automatically-generated branch name in the text box below that selection – you will need it later if you want to edit multiple files as part of the same pull request – and click the Propose changes button.
• On the pull request page, give your PR a short title that helps people quickly identify what it does. Feel free to provide more information in the description field.
• Click the Create pull request button. This will automatically start a series of tests to ensure everything is still working as expected. While those run, you can assign someone to review your pull request using the "Reviewers" section in the right sidebar. Most PRs will be automatically assigned a reviewer, but you can add your own. See the pull requests and CODEOWNERS sections of the intro for more information.

If you need to edit multiple files as part of a single pull request, it is best to use a desktop file editor. Doing it directly in GitHub is a bit more complicated.

• After editing your first file as described above, navigate to the , external,list of branches, find the one you created above, and click it. This will display a list of all files in the Handbook, but as they exist on your branch.
• Browse the file tree to find the ones you want to edit. Click a filename to open a file viewer. From here, you can edit the file by clicking the pencil icon above the content.
• When you finish editing a file, make sure Commit directly to the <your branch> branch is selected and then click the Commit changes button. This will cause your new edits to be added to the pull request you opened previously.
• You can continue to edit files from your branch and they will be added to your pull request.