@jschauma I use the mnemonic "Squaring [..] the circle (..)" to remember the order.. then I just have to remember whether it's the text or link first 🤦‍♂️

@jschauma I use editor shortcuts to help me not make this mistake.

I also noticed this one for VIM users: https://ryan-schachte.com/notes/vim_link_binding/

@jschauma How I remember it: [HERE'S A LINK!](https://my friend forgot to add the url, so here it is.com), like a parenthetical aside after a statement. 😅

@jschauma

Ah, mais ça me fait ça tout le temps !!!

Je me sens moins seule, d’un coup !!

@jschauma text goes on a [page], urls go through (cables)

@jschauma Maybe Textile had it right? https://textile-lang.com/doc/links

@jschauma Yeah I prefer gemtext for that
=> link and the description

@jschauma@mstdn.social omg i thought it was just me

@jschauma I think of it like: link (what that actually is)

@jschauma@mstdn.social this was explained to me to treat [] as the function call and (link) as the argument. Never messed up since.

@jschauma Not a single picture on Fediverse has exposed me as much as this one

@jschauma “Square peg in a round hole”

@jschauma its quite simple really.

how do we treat links?

without markdown, you'd say:

Hey, look at google! (google.com)

so, with markdown, you say:

Hey, look at [google](https://google.com)

that's it!

@jschauma@mstdn.social i made up a stupid way to remember and now i remember every time

@jschauma I picked up the mnemonic “curls for the URLs” and that works well for me!

@jschauma @josh really ought to be the right one as brackets manage a function.

@jschauma I legitimately get this right 100% of the time by having remembered that it's the options that makes the least logical sense to me

@jschauma it’s [text] (url) because the text is square like a tag or text box

@jschauma I remember them the same way I do port/starboard.

bracket : text
parenthesis : url

port : left
starboard : right

the first letter of each is in the same position - lowest letter, highest letter

@jschauma @quephird YES!!!!! EVERY. DAMN. TIME!!

@jschauma @LineaAspera [url](url)

@jschauma A friend of mine once told me that his magic trick to remember the order was that he came up with a silly song that went "🎵Markdown links are like arrays of functions🎵" -- I don't even know the melody but I never forgot those lyrics!

And to remember whether the text of URL goes inside the parentheses, here's a trick of my own: OF COURSE it's the choice that causes problems with Wikipedia links that have disambiguation like https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiss_(band)

You're welcome!!

@jschauma [button](psst, btw it’s this)

@jschauma I have opposite problem now. I’m so used to using Markdown in everything that every other markup language fucks me up now, especially BBcode. xD

@jschauma I didn't comment on the `ln -s` version of this meme, because I make symlinks often enough that I've got that down (I also have my own makes-sense-to-me way of remembering it).

Links in markdown tho? Fuggeddaboudid. I avoid them. I just write out the URL and figure whoever sees it will figure it out, or if it's something like linear or notion, their backend will do it for me.

@jschauma I prefer:
[text]

.
.
.

[text]: url

@jschauma
Now, I 'm having doubts!

@jschauma There is no spec, use both! (RST FTW)

@jschauma@mstdn.social took me a while to learn it's brackets and text first and round braces with url second.

Only learned it by remembering ![...] is for images and that appears first

@jschauma Hey, _my_ custom markdown does [text][url]. I've thought about other options, but none of the two in the image have ever been on the table.

@jschauma I have similar problems when writing Pod - is it L<text|URL> or L<URL|text>

@jschauma@mstdn.social i remember this by treating the url as secondary information and secondary information is placed in parentheses

@jschauma@mstdn.social ​:blaze:​[url(text)]​:blaze:​

@jschauma@mstdn.social a clear win for the org mode syntax. It's just [[url][text]].
Or was it [[text][url]]?
Oh crap ​:blobcatgooglynotlikethis:​

@jschauma I remember it as: You click on what looks like a [button](and link to source follows in parentheses, just like you would explain an abbreviation).

@jschauma@mstdn.social My mnemonic is, "[] is for citations like [1][2][3] or [source]".

@jschauma I always remember it that way: Brackets comes before Parenthesis → B comes before P

@jschauma i always do [url](text) the first time I do it in a long while 😂

@jschauma Time passes from left to right, the same direction as reading in english.

At first you have a block. Time passes, and it erodes the protruding angles into smooth curly braces.

@jschauma
Basically the reason why I switched to

[description][ref]

[ref]: url

@jschauma@mstdn.social skill issue

@jschauma as always with these things: try one of them and see whether it works (if not, try the other one). Rather than stressing out about it.

@jschauma now I’m confused

@jschauma@mstdn.social

Ironically I remembered that part pretty quickly because it's the way that feels less intuitive to me:

[Text](Url)

@jschauma i just remember that there is a line at the bottom of the clickable text, so add [ ] around it the other one is ( ).

@jschauma every time I take a break from my blog I hit this.

@jschauma cURvy ones for URL, that is my memo to remind it correctly

@jschauma every time!

@jschauma @podfeet I always think of it as a parenthetical link (by the way if, you want to visit that site, it’s here).

@jschauma honestly, sometimes I even forget which one goes in the brackets & which one goes in the parentheses

*Adds two more buttons*

@jschauma just think links are functions

[functionname](parameter)

@jschauma the world is "spherical" so the "world wide web" goes in the () is how i remember these days.

@jschauma "square the circle" is how I've always remembered it, though every time I need to think about it I mutter another little prayer regarding the heat and lack of general humidity in the place john gruber goes as a reward

@jschauma me every time! I'm always looking it up somewhere..

@jschauma "I'm in this picture, and I don't like it."

@jschauma

It's the order that confuses me. Opposite from HTML link tag markup.

@jschauma so true!!!!!! its like plugging in USB, i somehow always get it wrong first and have to fix it to the right way after seeing that it didn't work

@jschauma I thought I was the only one who couldn't remember.

@jschauma Tgat's or mattermost's channel at $workplace.

Good thing "Edit message" was invented 😅

@jschauma so truuuuuuue :)

by the way same with latex :

\href{link}{title}
\href{title}{link} 

@jschauma RELATABLE.

@jschauma@mstdn.social mines

Important stuff usually goes in [...] Meaningless dithering goes in (...)


Does this make sense? No.

Does it work? Usually

@jschauma every single time.

@jschauma images are  and i just remember that the square bracket goes together with the exclamation mark like it fits next to it and the link syntax is the same

@jschauma

I run into the same problem with OrgMode under Emacs and TiddlyWiki:

Orgmode: [[URL][Text]]
TiddlyWiki: [[text|URL]]

@jschauma The struggle is real.

@jschauma@mstdn.social

"Markdown is so much easier," they said.

"WHICH flavor of markdown are you referring to," I replied.

@jschauma this is why HTML is easier, as the text is outside the <> bits and other things are inside, whereas markdown has too many syntaxes. How many asterisks do I need for bold again? <b> I can remember. Never mind nesting lists

@jschauma

@jschauma i remember that it looks like calling a function, with the url as a parameter. A bit weird, but i don't have to think about it anymore.

@jschauma
it's

[text](url) in Markdown, and
`text <url>`_ in RST, but
[url text] in MediaWiki, and
<<url,text>> in AsciiDoc

because yay consistency

@jschauma How I remember: You don’t have to hold shift to start with, but you need to hold shift for the second part. It’s easier to write the text without holding shift.

@jschauma ok but for markdown images 🥹

@jschauma Somewhere I read that you can think about it as a function declaration. First function name, then parenthesis with parameters `function_name(params)` -> `[link name](link url)`

@jschauma Oh yeah and the very similar anxiety from

[[url text]] vs [[url|text]] (the first one is Fossil and Mediawiki, the second one is Dokuwiki)

@jschauma I am not alone?! 😭

@jschauma
https://asciidoctor.org[Asciidoctor]
https://docs.asciidoctor.org/asciidoc/latest/syntax-quick-reference/#links

@jschauma [text|url] 🤡

@jschauma @lisamelton I now try to remember this as [important thing](this is the link by the way)

@jschauma Every. Single. Time.

@jschauma
Wikipedia: [[target page|link text]]
Jira: [link text|target URL]

As a Wikipedia editor who’s also a business analyst: argh

@jschauma Literally me, every, single, time.

@jschauma I feel personally attacked.

@jschauma That’s like me and grep. Which side is the file and which is the pattern? It’s always the other side. Even when I know it’s always the other side, it’s the other side. God damn it.

@jschauma in markdown-mode for emacs they have interactive function for this

@jschauma I've always thought of the (url) part as some kind of function argument - and arguments are behind the function.

And thanks to the other comments here I can finally remember if it's

[text](url)

or

[url](text)

:)

@jschauma @jsled I know this was a joke (and it’s good) but in case it helps: the way I got this to stick for me is to think of it as a function call where () denotes the url parameter.

@jschauma This just gave me anxiety

@jschauma bouba/kiki might be a way to remember:

text is a kiki word --> kiki-brackets
url definetly bouba --> bouba-brackets

@jschauma I'm still using this Perl/TextExpander script @bart taught us 9 years ago to "linking clipboard".

https://www.bartbusschots.ie/s/2015/12/30/pretty-markdown-html-links-with-text-expander-perl/

@jschauma
[The sign](the detail)

@jschauma [(text url)]

FUUUUUUUUUUU

@jschauma so true, but it helps to imagine that you call a function and pass the url as an argument

@jschauma Why using markdown when AsciiDoc exists...