RE: Where do you place the Glossary hyperlink? Phase 2 question

["Nuckols, Kenneth M" <Kenneth -dot- Nuckols -at- mybrighthouse -dot- com>]

John Posada said...

> However, some descriptions refer to the same element more than once
> in a paragraph. An example might be:
> 
> "The "XX_source" table has a related "XX_archive" table where a copy
> of the entity record is moved from the "XX_source" table to the
> "XX_archive" table once the status reaches status 6 (deployed)."
> 
> Note...the text, while based on real content, has been whacked down
> in size, so if the composition seems odd, it isn't as odd in the real
> content.
> 
> In the above, if they click on "XX_source" or "XX_archive", they are
> linked to the page in the data dictionary that exposes the complete
> structure of the table (columns, SPs, Indexes, views, triggers, etc.)
> 
> In this case, I make EVERY instance hyperlinked because I cannot
> control when the developer is going to want to see the internals and
> I don't want him having to backtrack each instance to find the linked
> instance. it may not be until the third or fourth time an element is
> mentioned that he says "Hmmm...I gotta see this thing.", and I want
> the link to be available to him at that moment.
> 
> Does anyone have strong feelings about how, in this case, I link
> every mention, even if it is multiple times in a paragraph?
> 

I can certainly see your point in doing this, and I don't think it's a
bad idea in principal. You're possibly giving them more opportunities
than they need to follow the link, but since you're not writing a sales
brochure, more information is preferable to less.

My only question for you is this: do you follow this rule absolutely, or
do you sometimes get to a point where you decide to lay off the links or
spread them out more because the paragraph text is glowing with more
patches of color than a disco dance floor? Depending on how many terms
you link in a paragraph and how often they appear, I could foresee some
paragraphs becoming so dense with links that it becomes distracting to
the reader, and that might start getting some users annoyed instead of
grateful for your effort.

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