---
title: Linking effectively
#description: none
author: Issa Rice
creation-date: 2015-01-03
last-major-revision-date: 2015-01-03
language: English
# accepts "notes", "draft", "in progress", or "mostly finished"
#status: notes
# accepts "certain", "highly likely", "likely", "possible", "unlikely", "highly unlikely", "remote", "impossible", "log", "emotional", or "fiction"
#belief: 
# accepts "CC0", "CC-BY", or "CC-BY-SA"
license: CC-BY
tags: writing, content creation
aliases: hyperlink, hyperlinks, hyperlinking effectively, effective linking
---

# Hyperlinking effectiely

Some places to look:

- <http://www.catie.ca/sites/default/files/hyperlinking-04.pdf> (seems decent if basic)
- <http://www.digitalbusiness.gov.au/creating-your-website/creating-and-organising-content/using-hyperlinks-effectively/> (see the section near the bottom; seems to be overlap with the first link, but also has new info?)

Things to talk about:

- linking in PDFs versus HTML
- relative vs absolute links
- include examples
- linking in e.g. plaintext email, where *only* exposed links are possible
- URL shorteners?
- long exposed links appear poorly on mobile browsers
- when to use linking style like (1, 2, 3) or (here, here, and here) or (more) (GiveWell does the third.)
- internal vs external links
- email obfuscation in links? (what pandoc does)
- referrer masking
- when to use footnotes, when to use links, when to use parentheses
- From LW boring advice: "Never post a web link that requires a reader to click on it to find out if they want to click on it."