NanoFile

Markdown link generator

Four shapes, one form. Useful mostly for the two you write rarely enough to look up: a reference link, and an image wrapped in a link.

No space between the closing bracket and the opening parenthesis. That single space is the most common reason a link renders as literal brackets.

Markdown
[the documentation](https://example.com/docs)

How it works

  1. The text goes in square brackets and the address in parentheses, with no space between them: that space is the most common reason a link renders as literal brackets.
  2. A title is optional and goes inside the parentheses in quotes. It shows on hover and is usually skipped.
  3. A reference link keeps the address out of the sentence and defines it elsewhere in the file, which is worth it for a long URL or one used twice.
  4. An image is the same syntax with an exclamation mark in front, and the brackets hold alt text rather than a caption.

Questions

Why did my link render as brackets and parentheses?

Almost always a space between `]` and `(`. Markdown needs them touching. The checker on this site reports it as `link-space`.

When is a reference link worth it?

When the same address appears more than once, or when a very long URL in the middle of a sentence makes the source unreadable. Both are about the raw file being readable, which is what markdown is for.

Related

The same tools, without a tab open

Not released yet

Everything on this page runs in the app too, on the files already on your device: the same generators, the same checker, the same converters, offline. Which matters most when the document you are working on is not one you would put in a browser.

For iPhone, iPad and Mac. It is not in the App Store, so there is nothing to download from this page yet.Digital Sandbox, who are building it →