Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Linking: Difference between revisions

This guideline is a part of the English Wikipedia's Manual of Style. It is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though occasional exceptions may apply. Any substantive edit to this page should reflect consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page.

The use of links to other Wikipedia articles, for example, [[Ant]], is encouraged. Use the links for all words and terms that are relevant to the article.

The purpose of internal links is to allow readers to easily and conveniently follow their curiosity or research to other articles. These links should be included where it is most likely that a reader would want to follow them elsewhere — for example, in article introductions, the beginnings of new sections, table cells, and image captions. Generally, where it is likely that a reader may wish to read about another topic, the reader should not have to hunt for a link elsewhere in the page.

On the other hand, do not make too many links. An article may be considered overlinked if any of the following is true:

• more than 10% of the words are contained in links;
• it has more links than lines;
• a link is repeated in the same article (although there may be case for duplicating an important link that is distant from the previous occurrence);
• more than 10% of the links are to articles that don't exist; or
• low added-value items are linked without reason — such as, 1995, 1980s, and 20th century.

This also applies to tables, considered by themselves.

As a general rule, do not put links in the title; however, this may be acceptable with complex titles or verbose leads, such as those concerning multiple concepts.

Links that follow the Wikipedia naming conventions are much more likely to lead to existing articles. When there is not yet an article about that subject, good links will make the creation of a correctly named article much easier for later writers.

It is possible to link words that are not exactly the same as the linked article title — for example, [[English language|English]]. However, make sure that it is still clear what the link refers to without having to follow the link.

When forming plurals, do so thus: [[language]]s. This is clearer to read in wiki form than [[language|languages]] — and easier to type. This syntax is also applicable to adjective constructs such as [[Asia]]n, as well as hyphenated phrases and the like.

As the World Wide Web Consortium says, "Don't say 'click here'; not everyone will be clicking". Link an existing word or phrase in context.

While editing, use preview to check a link, and follow it by opening the page in another window. If that title doesn't seem to exist, do a quick search to find out whether that is really the case. The article may have a differently worded title, or the subject may be included in a separate section of an existing article.

Links should use the most precise target that arises in the context, even where that is merely a simple redirect to a less specific page title. Don't use a piped link to avoid otherwise legitimate redirect targets that fit well within the scope of the text. This assists in determining when a significant number of references to redirected links warrant more detailed articles. For example, link to "Rome, Italy" rather than "[[Rome, Italy|Rome]], [[Italy]]", and "V8 engine" rather than "V8 engine".

Automated processes should not replace or pipe links to redirects. Instead, the link should always be examined in context. (For more information, see Wikipedia:Disambiguation, Wikipedia:Redirect#Don't fix links to redirects that aren't broken, and Wikipedia:Redirects with possibilities.)

Where a date contains day, month, and year — [[25 March]], [[2004]] — or day and month — [[February 10]] — a link will permit the date preferences of the reader to operate. Day, month, and year must all be linked for the preference to work correctly.

Other chronological items such as simple years (for example, 1981) should be treated like any other words and linked only where they are particularly relevant to the topic.

There is currently no rule prescribing whether one should write "See also Train" or "See also train" (and similar with a bulleted list), but in the case of multiple links, be consistent.

Wikipedia is not a link collection and an article with only links is actively discouraged.

The syntax for referencing a URL is simple. Just enclose it in single brackets:

[URL link title after space]

The URL must begin with http:// or another common protocol, such as ftp:// or news://.

In addition, putting URLs in plain text with no markup automatically produces a link, for example http://en.wikipedia.org/. However, this feature may disappear in a future release. Therefore, in cases where you wish to display the URL because it is intrinsically valuable information, it is better to use the short form of the URL (host name) as the optional text: [http://en.wikipedia.org/ en.wikipedia.org] produces en.wikipedia.org.

You should not add a descriptive title to an embedded HTML link within an article. Instead, when giving an embedded link as a source within an article, simply enclose the URL in square brackets, like this. [1] However, you should add a descriptive title when an external link is offered in the References, Further reading, or External links section. This is done by supplying descriptive text after the URL, separated by a space and enclosing it all in square brackets.

For example, to add a title to a bare URL such as http://en.wikipedia.org/ (this is rendered as "http://en.wikipedia.org/"), use the following syntax: [http://en.wikipedia.org/ an open-content encyclopedia] (this is rendered as "an open-content encyclopedia").

Generally, URLs are ugly and uninformative; it is better for a meaningful title to be displayed rather than the URL itself. For example, "European Space Agency website" is much more reader-friendly than "http://www.esa.int/export/esaCP/index.html". There may be exceptions where the url is well known or is the company name. In this case, putting both the url and a valid title will be more informative, for example, "European Space Agency website, www.esa.int".

If the URL is displayed, make it as simple as possible; for example, if the index.html is superfluous, remove it (but be sure to check in preview mode first).

The "printable version" of a page displays all URLs in full, including those given a title, so no information is lost.

Without the optional text, external references appear as automatically numbered links: For example,

[http://en.wikipedia.org/]

is displayed like this:

[2]

When an embedded HTML link is used to provide an inline source in an article, a numbered link should be used after the punctuation, like this, [3] with a full citation given in the References section. See Wikipedia:Cite sources and Wikipedia:Verifiability for more information.

When placed in the References and External links sections, these links should be expanded with link text, and preferably a full citation, including the name of the article, the author, the journal or newspaper the article appeared in, the date it was published, and the date retrieved.

Embedded links are positioned after the sentence or paragraph they are being used as a source for, and after the punctuation, like this. [4]

A full citation should then be added to the References section. Links not used as sources can be listed in the External links section:

==External links==

*[http://

*[http://

As with other top-level headers, two equal signs should be used to markup the external links header (see Headings elsewhere in the article).

See Wikipedia:Citing_sources#Embedded_HTML_links for how to format these, and Wikipedia:Verifiability, which is policy.

Since this is the English Wikipedia, webpages in English are highly preferred. Linking to non-English pages may still be useful for English-language readers in some cases:

• when linking to pages with maps, diagrams, photos, tables; explain the key terms with the link, so that people who do not know the language can still interpret them
• for example, if the subject of the article is a Spanish-language newspaper

In such cases indicate what language the site is in. For example:

• El País, a Spanish-language newspaper from Madrid

If the link is not to an HTML file, identify the file type. If a browser plugin is required to view to the file, mention that as well.

If the link is to a large file (in the case of html, including the images) a note about that is useful. Someone with a slow connection may decide not to use it.