Linked Text

Monday, April 2nd, 2007 at 9:00 AM | Category: Business, Language, Meryl's Notes Blog, Tech, Writing 4 comments

In creating links, I try to give context to the words contained within the link. Sometimes it doesn’t work and I end up using something awful like “click here” or “article” as the linked words. Online Copywriter references W3C’s recommendations for linked text.

I could’ve wrote “W3C provides recommendations for linked text.” In this case, would I link “W3C,” “recommendations for linked text,” “W3C provides recommendations for linked text,” or use two separate links (one for “W3C” to its home page and one for “recommendations for linked text” to the recommendations)?

I don’t like to include two links (one to the site’s home page and one to the resource) because you’re giving the reader more choices. We have too many choices. It helps to limit choices in online content especially since readers deal with links in the navigation on top of everything.

Sometimes — especially when writing a blog entry — I don’t have the luxury to figure out the best way to link something. I agree with Online Copywriter that avoiding verb phrases in links doesn’t make sense. “Contact us” and “Tell us” make good examples.

I read an article years ago (in Internet time) that it’s better to use “Click here” because some people need specific directions. Maybe the Internet has been around long enough for us to stop doing that. Or maybe people still need specific directions like “Click here.” Or maybe we should say, “Click here for …” From my perspective — it doesn’t bother me. To borrow from P.T. Barnum: I’ve never (rarely) met linked text that I didn’t like.

What do you think?

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4 comments

  • Posted by Michael Sauers on April 2nd, 2007, 9:30 AM

    I strongly discourage the use of “click here” as a link for accessibility reasons. Some text-to-speech browsers read back to the user just a list of the links available on a page. A user hearing “click here” totally out of context will have no idea what will happen when they click on that link. If the link text makes no sense out of context, it’s not a good link.

    As for “click here for…” I tend to view that as laziness as there’s always a better way from a grammatical standpoint. Also, I don’t by the “users need instruction” argument. It’s been more than a decade and people know to click. (But what about the people using keyboards, they’re not clicking, they’re pressing enter.) That’s like saying “forward slash” when reading out a URL. It’s just not necessary any more.

  • Posted by Meryl / @merylkevans on April 2nd, 2007, 9:34 AM

    Excellent points, Michael. Thank you for taking the time to provide an insightful comment. I don’t want to make it difficult for those relying on text-to-speech and that reason alone is enough to make me change my habit.

  • Posted by steve on April 3rd, 2007, 3:20 PM

    Meryl:

    Nice post as always. Do I know you? are you Meryl the Famous Content Maven???? (if so – don’t click here)

    I think it may be good to use both. Why? Because some readers are adept and some aren’t. Some are savvy. Some aren’t.

    Some content platforms display hyper-linked text – some muck it up. Especially news distribution sites. For example – Morningstar does- Yahoo does – others don’t – like http://lasalle.yellowbrix.com/pages/lasalle/Story.nsp?story_id=104755910&type=sfb&ID=lasalle&scategory=Business+and+Finance&

    Anyway – nice post!

  • Posted by Working with Link Styles on April 27th, 2007, 7:51 AM

    [...] Linked text is another story. [...]

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