Why I don’t use links in my posts
Several blog readers have asked why I usually don’t use hyperlinks in my posts, but instead tend to use footnotes. The reason is that studies have shown that the presence of hyperlinks impairs reading performance.1
Hyperlinks interrupt the flow of reading. I think that using footnotes instead of hyperlinks minimizes this type of interruption to the flow of reading, while still allowing readers to easily locate any sources that I refer to in a post.
Footnotes
1 Diana DeStefano and Jo-Anne LeFevre, Cognitive load in hypertext reading: A review, Computers in Human Behavior 23 (2007), pp. 1616–1641. PDF available here.
2 thoughts on “Why I don’t use links in my posts”
So, when you draft briefs, do you use footnotes, or in-text citations?
I use in-text citations. That is the common practice in Arizona, and the people I work for all prefer to use in-text citations. But I would prefer to use footnotes if I could. What do you do?