To link or not to link? Using hypertext wisely

Links are the soul of the web, but make sure they support your content rather than detracting from it.

By David Walbert

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Web Publishing & Collaboration Guide

LEARN NC works collaboratively with educators and other individuals from a variety of backgrounds to develop web-based resources for teachers and students. This manual guides educators through the process of developing content for publication on the web, including writing, design, technical guidelines, and copyright.

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Writing for the Web

How teachers can more effectively communicate information and ideas via the World Wide Web, to students, parents, colleagues, administrators, and the world.

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Related pages

• Scannability: organizing for the web: How you organize and format your writing can go a long way toward making it readable.
• Finding your audience: a primer: Before you sit down to write something, ask yourself some questions about the people who will read it.
• Keep it short (but not too short): Shorter paragraphs and pages will help make your writing easier to read on the web, but you don't have to sacrifice important content.

Related topics

• Learn more about linking, web design, and writing.

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To some extent, the entire point of the web is hyperlinking, the making of nonlinear connections between documents. That’s why it’s called a web, after all! But where and how you link will change the way readers read your document, and so effective hyperlinking takes some thought.

There are essentially two ways to link to related websites and web pages from your document. You can embed a hyperlink directly in the text of your document, or you can provide links in a sidebar or at the end of your document. There are advantages and disadvantages to each method, and there is a time for each.

Embedded links

In the introduction to the article on organizing for the web, I linked to a previous article from within a sentence. Here it is again:

On the web, because of the demands of the medium, readers are more likely to scan the page than to read every word.

In this case, I didn’t want to repeat what I’d said in a previous article about the challenges of reading on the web. But I didn’t want to assume that everyone had already read that article — maybe they found this one by a keyword search, and started here. Linking from that sentence to the previous article gave readers the option of learning more about the topic before going on with this article.

Embedding links within text is the simplest and most common method of linking, and probably the most useful, as well. But there is a danger that once readers leave your page via a hyperlink, they won’t come back — or that once they do return, they’ll have forgotten where they were on the page or what you were talking about. Hyperlinks interrupt the flow of your writing, and thus of a reader’s reading. (When I read a piece of writing on the web that is studded with hyperlinks, I sometimes feel that the author is almost daring me to leave.) So you have to use them judiciously, as I’ll explain below.

Supplemental links

Another option, which I frequently use when posting articles on LEARN NC, is to link to related articles, websites, and so on at the end of an article or in a sidebar, the right-hand column that runs alongside the main text of the article. I prefer using a sidebar because it doesn’t assume that readers will finish the article. This way, readers can easily see the links and know that they have the option of getting more information, but they aren’t interrupted in their reading.

The disadvantage of this method, of course, is that the links aren’t as easily accessible to readers. Readers may not scan the sidebar at all; they may not scroll all the way to the end of the page to find links; or they may forget by the time they’re finished that the links were there.

Where to link?

How do you decide when to embed your links and when to set them alongside your writing? There are several factors to consider.

What kind of content?

The first is what type of content you’re providing. If your web page is mainly providing quick bites of information, go ahead and embed your links. Your readers are probably looking for something specific and won’t be deterred by embedded links, or else they’ll use the embedded links to find that specific information. If, for example, you’re posting a resume or curriculum vitae, you’ll certainly want to link directly to a school’s website, your classroom home page, or the fabulous lesson plan you published on LEARN NC.

If, on the other hand, you’re providing a longer explanation of a complex idea, you’ll want to consider moving the links to the side, the end, or another page entirely. You’ve taken the time to write it; let readers take the time to read it — at least don’t discourage them from doing so.

Who’s in control?

The second factor to consider is the importance of clear and specific communication. If you’re writing casually for readers who have their own agendas, link away. Plentiful and obvious links will let readers find their own paths through hyperspace and make their own connections among content. If you’re posting some observations on teaching to your personal website, for example, readers will find embedded links most helpful.

But suppose you’re posting an assignment on a classroom website or in an online course. You don’t want your readers — i.e., your students — to have their own agendas; you want them to follow your agenda. So provide links to helpful information at the end of the assignment, where students will find them after they’ve read what you wrote for them.

Keeping on topic

Third, consider how closely related the link is to your main topic. If you’re linking to a website about a similar topic just in case your readers are interested, you may want to save it for a sidebar or the end of the article. If I wanted to link from this article to an opposing viewpoint, I’d do it in a sidebar, because I’d like you to finish reading my article first. (Otherwise, why would I have written it?) Or, if you are publishing a lesson plan to teach about endangered species and want to link to a cool site about pandas, consider saving it for a special “supplemental resources” section of the plan.

An explanation of a key concept is more likely to merit an embedded link than a tangentially related website. If your readers are likely to need the content of the linked page before they go on reading your document — as in my example at the beginning of this article — then by all means, embed the link in your text, where they’ll find it exactly when they need it. Or, to use the example of a lesson plan, if the site about pandas is a key part of the classroom instruction you’re explaining, then link it from an appropriate place in the body of the lesson plan.

Smooth linking

Finally, when you embed your links, don’t draw your readers’ attention to them unnecessarily. That may seem counterintuitive, but the reason that hyperlinks appear in distinct colors and underlined or in boldface is to ensure that readers recognize them as hyperlinks. You don’t need to use the “click here” construction to make sure readers see them.

Instead, simply make the appropriate word or phrase in your existing writing into a hyperlink. The text will flow much more nicely, and readers who don’t want to follow the link will be better able to ignore it. Consider the following example:

• Don’t: On the web, because of the demands of the medium, readers are more likely to scan the page than to read every word. (Click here to read more about the demands of reading on the web.)
• Do: On the web, because of the demands of the medium, readers are more likely to scan the page than to read every word.

Conclusion

In short, hyperlinking is the power of the web, and it’s a shame not to take advantage of it. Links are useful to readers, and they’re free. But studding your writing with hyperlinks can encourage short attention spans and discourage serious reading. When you write for the web, you have to use your own best judgement.