Should one include hyperlinks in the body of a text? One can make the argument that links are the lifeblood – if not the point – of the web (it’s where the spindly metaphor comes from) but it’s also disastrous to the flow of a text, distracting the reader’s attention. What’s more, as is becoming more obvious as the Internet ages, links decay and “rot” as their content disappears or changes.
Just like poor writers abuse footnotes – or hyphens – they can abuse links (or parantheses for that matter). Every time a reader’s eyes traverse one, a decision has to be made whether to hover over it to see where it goes, to follow it, to read its contents, or to ignore it. It leads to a kind of attentional fatigue, where the amount of information potentially contained within increases exponentially with each blue-tinged pop-out to somewhere else.
Admittedly there are cases where links have their uses – e.g., providing source material or more in-depth information – but there’s a fine line between that and attention-disrespecting, lazy writing. With some effort, I hope, one can find that sweet spot of a text that is sufficiently sparse in links without losing depth or becoming verbose, all the while retaining the reader’s full attention and comprehension.
In contrast to citations in, e.g., academic writing, there are no clear rules for when a link should be produced, creating ambiguity as to why it’s there. Did they want to provide a source for what they said? Did they just summarize what is behind the link? Is there more, perhaps essential, information behind it? The reader is left guessing.
Then there’s the fragility of the web. Links rot and die, their content forever lost to the void. Content can also change unpredictably, either by the creator or some third-party censorship. In fact, this very blog post has been changed numerous times by myself after first publication; its location can also change on my whim. The point is: content on the web is transient and dynamic in nature, while the practice of hyperlinking assumes it is permanent and static.
So, when considering the style of this blog, I have three options. 1) do not highlight links in the body of a text, 2) provide a button to toggle link-highligting or 3) write in such a way as to not require links unless strictly necessary. As for 1), I think it produces the feeling that every word could be a link, which leads to a kind of unease in the reader. 2) takes some coding and perhaps even JavaScript, which I want to avoid. So in order to be maximally distraction-free and future-proof, I will work to self-contain my texts as far as it’s possible, without totally isolating them from the web.