RE: formatting - internal links versus external links

Subject: RE: formatting - internal links versus external links
From: "Steve Hudson" <sh1448291904 -at- gmail -dot- com>
To: "'Jay Maechtlen'" <techwriter -at- laserpubs -dot- com>, "'TechWrl list'" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Tue, 24 Nov 2015 09:00:53 +1100

Hi Jay,

Internal refs are usually detailed and have a page number, external refs
not. Usually external refs are to a bookmark (media independent), so that we
get

Please see 3.2 Drinking_Excessively on page 44 for more recipes.
Vs
Please see *this guide to drinking excessively* for more recipes.

So the notation follows purpose, and should be intuitive. Unfortunately, you
may wish to use that style for links external to your organisation, as your
mil spec documents in the repository are all chapter section topic headinged
and so on, and would look more like this:

Please see 3.2 Drinking_Excessively on page 44 of The_Party_Guide for more
recipes.

Again, notation following purpose and page number optional but included for
direct comparison. We have the mention of 'the other book in our library'
explicitly and ideally hyperlinked to its library instance. For all you
know, the reader's internal bread crumbing is working along the lines of
"Now where was that kick ass bloody Mary recipe. Hmmm, I was looking at the
HR polices document, the bit where it talked about bad stuff.... yeah
there.... and OH YES! Dammit, The Party Guide. I really should bookmark that
damn thing...." and it's something else within that venerable tome that they
are after.

I have never worried about explicitly pointing these formats out in a
conventions table, and users (reasonably IT savvy or better) instantly grok
the small differences. I do include them in a style guide, but seriously,
who READS one of those eh? LOL.

Steve Hudson
Word Heretic



-----Original Message-----
>From Jay Maechtlen
Sent: Tuesday, 24 November 2015 6:24

I don't recall seeing this - does anyone provide formatting or other cues to
the user that a link goes to an external document versus another location in
a document?

This was suggested for a longish doc that will live in a SharepPoint Wiki
site with lots of other docs.
((170+ pages, though they won't be 'pages' once posted)

--
Jay Maechtlen
626 444-5112 office
626 840-8875 cell
www.laserpubs.com
es @ http://techwr-l.com/archives


---
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Visit TechWhirl for the latest on content technology, content strategy and content development | http://techwhirl.com

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

You are currently subscribed to TECHWR-L as archive -at- web -dot- techwr-l -dot- com -dot-

To unsubscribe send a blank email to
techwr-l-leave -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com


Send administrative questions to admin -at- techwr-l -dot- com -dot- Visit
http://www.techwhirl.com/email-discussion-groups/ for more resources and info.

Looking for articles on Technical Communications? Head over to our online magazine at http://techwhirl.com

Looking for the archived Techwr-l email discussions? Search our public email archives @ http://techwr-l.com/archives


Follow-Ups:

References:
formatting - internal links versus external links: From: Jay Maechtlen

Previous by Author: RE: Re: Chapter first page always recto?
Next by Author: RE: What is embedded help?
Previous by Thread: Re: formatting - internal links versus external links
Next by Thread: Re: formatting - internal links versus external links


What this post helpful? Share it with friends and colleagues:


Sponsored Ads