This article is part of a series of videos and other instructional pieces geared to help the readers and reporters on The Rapidian be able to use our site more easily.
Other articles in the series will continue to build and include:
When creating an article on The Rapidian, it's important to share the source of your information and the claims found in your article. You may also want to help your readers find more information about an issue, subject or event.
If you were writing an academic paper, you would probably use a footnote or endnote to serve either of those purposes. Just a little number hiked up at the end of a word, indicating that the reader (should they be ever so curious) could go to the bottom of the page or the end of the paper to find out more.
Have you ever seen a footnote or endnote online? They're pretty rare. We definitely don't have them on The Rapidian. So what do you do instead? Well, I suppose you could pause for a moment and write out the explanation of the source or the added information. But I wouldn't recommend it. It breaks the flow of your writing, interrupting with more information than many readers may want to be bothered with. Other readers may want even more information than you would want to add in the middle of your article. So where do you find the balance, providing more information for those who want it without disturbing those that don't?
Thankfully, the interwebs have a neat little solution for you: hyperlinks, those little bits of green text (on The Rapidian they're green, anyway) that can catapult you to another web address.
To learn how to add hyperlinks to your own article, watch this quick screencapture video. You'll find it's very easy once we've walked you through it.
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