As part of posting to Kairosnews, I've often thought about linking and what is the proper way to compose a link. Thus, I was excited to find Robin Skyler over at ambiguous.org posting some interesting ideas on The Syntax of Links.

First, I like what Skyler has to say about quoted phrases and linking. In the case where a quote is short and made into a hyperlink, it does seem appropriate to leave the quotes off.

Next, I'm glad that Skyler confronts the use of underlining titles versus using links. I've come to the conclusion that eventually, we will move to using italics only, not underlines, to denote titles of texts in both print and online so that it's easier to discriminate a title versus a hyperlink.

How about punctuation and links? Does an end puncutation get included in a link, like in a quote where we include the comma or period inside the quotation marks? Skyler points out that including the punctuation is the "tacit standard." It has always seemed better to me since the punctuation does not correspond semantically to the linked text. Plus, if the link is used again later in a text, it may not have some end punctuation associated with it; consistency in linking is one of the more accepted standards.

Anyone else have an ideas for thinking about the syntax of linking? For example, i've been wondering when and if we should include articles in front of a noun as part of a hyperlink.