Fewer Links in Web Articles, Better
I search for online writing guides and find this:
Links are a distraction. It is pointless to write a paragraph and then fill it with invitations to your reader to go elsewhere.
- Web Style Guide (webstyleguide.com/style/links.html)
Links are so inviting to click. The Beethoven page from Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org) goes like this:
Born in Bonn, Germany, he moved to Vienna, Austria, in his early twenties and settled there, studying with Joseph Haydn and quickly gaining a reputation as a virtuoso pianist. Beethoven’s hearing gradually deteriorated beginning in his twenties, yet he continued to compose masterpieces, and to conduct and perform, even after he was completely deaf.
So tempting to click away! It is not a problem for Wikipedia because it is an encyclopaedia. But if I write an article about Beethoven, I surely do not want my reader ends up in reading anatomy of human brains.
Hyperlinks are what make web articles differ from prints. But obviously less is more. I can recall that most web articles I could finish reading are those with very few links. No wonder popular on-line magazines, newspapers, and article-based sites offer web articles with very few links. Those sites keep me going back again and again. Here are two of them:
- A List Apart (www.alistapart.com)
- ChessCafe (www.chesscafe.com)
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