# Why does Discourse prefer footnote-style Markdown links?
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-does-discourse-prefer-footnote-style-markdown-links/32683
**Category:** UX
**Created:** [August 29, 2015, 3:24pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-does-discourse-prefer-footnote-style-markdown-links/32683 "2015-08-29T15:24:02Z")
**Posts on this page:** 7
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@erlend\_sh](https://meta.discourse.org/u/erlend_sh)
#### Post date: [August 29, 2015, 3:24pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-does-discourse-prefer-footnote-style-markdown-links/32683/1 "2015-08-29T15:24:02Z")
I’m referring to this kind of linking:
`[see this article][1]`
… which is the Discourse default, as opposed to this type of linking:
`[see this article](http://example.com/article)`
I’m curious, why are you opting for the footnote style of linking? Is it just a [remnant of the StackOverflow](http://stackoverflow.com/editing-help#links) days?
I find the `[title](link)` syntax to be much less error prone. It makes it considerably easier to change or remove links, and it’s most likely the syntax you’ll adhere to if you’re formatting the entire link by hand.
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### Author:  [@BiosElement](https://meta.discourse.org/u/BiosElement)
#### Post date: [August 29, 2015, 7:13pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-does-discourse-prefer-footnote-style-markdown-links/32683/2 "2015-08-29T19:13:22Z")
Maybe less error prone, but much harder to read if you’re editing the markdown without the help of a preview window. Is this perhaps an important use-case? If so, then I’d say the footnote-style makes a lot of sense. Otherwise, it does indeed seem to lose some of it’s benefits.
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [August 29, 2015, 8:21pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-does-discourse-prefer-footnote-style-markdown-links/32683/3 "2015-08-29T20:21:16Z")
No reason, however, it is harder to read when long URLs are buried in the middle of sentences.
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### Author:  [@waldir](https://meta.discourse.org/u/waldir)
#### Post date: [September 3, 2015, 1:05am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-does-discourse-prefer-footnote-style-markdown-links/32683/4 "2015-09-03T01:05:32Z")
It seems to me that the inline style is easier to author, while the footnote style is easier to read.
In the case of Discourse, posts are shown in rendered html to most people – the Markdown source is usually only displayed to the post writer, so the inline style makes more sense IMO. If the text was meant to be consumed by others as source code, the footnote format would be appropriate, but that isn’t the case here.
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### Author:  [@erlend\_sh](https://meta.discourse.org/u/erlend_sh)
#### Post date: [November 7, 2015, 8:44am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-does-discourse-prefer-footnote-style-markdown-links/32683/5 "2015-11-07T08:44:17Z")
@eviltrout in the spirit of the [new composer](https://meta.discourse.org/t/help-us-test-the-rewritten-composer/34679) & Markdown renderer, could this change in behaviour be thrown in? 😉
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### Author:  [@eviltrout](https://meta.discourse.org/u/eviltrout)
#### Post date: [November 10, 2015, 8:22pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-does-discourse-prefer-footnote-style-markdown-links/32683/6 "2015-11-10T20:22:32Z")
Actually the new composer should be doing this already?
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### Author:  [@erlend\_sh](https://meta.discourse.org/u/erlend_sh)
#### Post date: [November 12, 2015, 8:22pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-does-discourse-prefer-footnote-style-markdown-links/32683/7 "2015-11-12T20:22:34Z")
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