5 August, 2010

Insert link here - yes, right here

Don't be so ridiculous.

Okay, there may be some, very specific situations where it might make some, very limited, sense to offer hyperlinks as footnotes on a web-published article rather than scattered through the text....

No. No, there really aren't. The whole purpose of inline hyperlinking is to connect to an external resource at the point of reference. If you find inline links genuinely impose a "cognitive penalty", you might try disciplining yourself to avoid following them until you've read the main text; I'm sure it'd become second-nature fairly quickly.

If they're available, readers can follow them, but delicate readers don't have to. If they're withheld (at the point of relevance), the cognitively-impaired hold everyone back. And that's unacceptable.