---
title: "DITA: Inline links"
date: 2014-12-27
description: "{% include notes.html %} As a general best practice, people say to avoid inline links if possible, but if referring to another topic or page, it might seem odd not..."
canonical_url: https://idratherbewriting.com/inline_links/index.html
---

> For AI agents: a documentation index is available at https://idratherbewriting.com/llms.txt. Markdown versions of all pages are available by appending .md to any page URL.

# DITA: Inline links

> To link to another topic or external site inline, you use the `xref` element.

As a general best practice, people say to avoid inline links if possible, but if referring to another topic or page, it might seem odd not to include the link.

The topic title will automatically be used as the anchor text for the link.

```xml
   <xref href="sample.dita"/>
```

If you want to manually specify the anchor text, code it like this:

```xml
   <xref href="sample.dita">Sample</xref>
```

If you're linking to an external source, you need to add the `scope` and `format` attributes to your link:

```xml
   <xref href="http://example.org" scope="external" outputclass="external" format="html">Example.org</xref>
```