Now that we have a page with a basic structure, we can begin to create
links to other documents. We call these "hypertextual" links.
Theory
To create links we use the Anchor tag <a>. If it were ever to
appear in simple form, it would look like an ordinary tag; that is,
<a>description to appear in page</a>
But the Anchor tag always has an extra piece of information in the opening
tag. When we use the Anchor tag to create a link to another document, we
insert the address of the other document in the form
href=address.
("href" stands for hypertext reference.) So the tag takes this form,
<a href=address>description</a>
If you can see a page on the World Wide Web, you can create a link to
it. Just copy its address (its URL) into the formula
<a href=address>description</a> on your page.
Example
For a simple example, say we want to link to a file in our own directory
named "cv.html". We want to identify the link as "my CV". We could write
the HTML like this: Here is <a href=cv.html>my CV</a>.
and it would look like this:
Here is my CV.
When we want to link to a file that is not in our own directory, we need
to give the entire URL as the address; for example, Here is <a href=http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/hot.html>a
file somewhere else</a>.
which would look like this:
Here is a file somewhere
else.
Aesthetic Note
Notice that (with rare exceptions) your text looks best if you keep the
<a> tag immediately before the next letter (with no intervening
spaces) and the </a> immediately after the last letter of your text
(with no intervening spaces).
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