Spring into technical writing for engineers and scientists by Rosenberg Barry J

Author:Rosenberg, Barry J
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Technical writing, Râedaction technique
Publisher: Upper Saddle River, NJ : Addison-Wesley
Published: 2005-09-05T16:00:00+00:00

Hyperlinks in Body Text

During the Web's infancy, many users thought that hyperlinks were its coolest feature. Nowadays, Web users take this critical technology for granted. This chunk explores how to get the most out of hyperlinks within body text.

Hyperlinks Are Revolutionary

Hyperlinks represent a sea change in how people search for technical information. True, hard-copy books have long contained endnote citations and bibliographies, which, like hyperlinks, point readers to similar sources. However, unless readers happened to be in a major library, access to cited works could be weeks away. By contrast, modern scholars now complain when a hyperlink forces them to wait more than ten seconds.

Click Here

Web designers hate using the phrase click here as anchor text. For example, approximately 100% of Web designers believe that the following hyperlink looks amateurish:

To see Dr. Jill Black's tutorial about eczema, click here .

Web designers greatly prefer using the target word or phrase as the anchor text. For example, the following example omits click here altogether:

Dr. Jill Black created a tutorial about eczema .

Once in a while, it is clearer to write a passage with click here than to adhere dogmatically to the click here prohibition. In fact, if your Web site's target audience includes many relative newcomers to the Web (yes, this still happens), then click here is often the least ambiguous choice.

QUANTUM LEAP

In this age of computer viruses, many readers are justifiably nervous about clicking hyperlinks unless they are sure of what they are getting into. When a user clicks a hyperlink in your Web site and is transported to a surprising location (even a benign one), that user often becomes suspicious about the rest of your Web site. All anchor text should honestly and accurately represent the target URL.

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