Everybody is familiar with the normal pipe link:

[snugglebunny|what you desire]

... which, as we know, links to snugglebunny with a link named "what you desire", just like this: what you desire.
But there is yet another tasty link type, provided for our use: the double pipe link.

[pretzels|tasty treats|Love and Peace]

We are now provided with a third argument. This is the way the link looks like:

tasty treats

The link looks deceptively innocent. Apparently (as confirmed by Dr. Nekojin) the third argument does nothing. But this is not the truth. What really happens is that

¡it appears on dem bones' clouded brows !

So, every time you click on the "tasty treats" link above you are taken to the pretzel node, and "Love and Peace" appears in Helvetica 12 Bold on dem bones' forehead, in fiery letters.
This is why you should use this kind of link with the utmost care; spelling mistakes give him a splitting headache.

More seriously...

A double-pipelink does not, at the time of writing, exist within E2. However, it would be nice if it did. It would enable you to simultaneously provide pipelink commentary (see Pipe links and three-dimensionality), and link to further (different) sources of information. Let me elaborate.

[Julius Caesar|Friends, Romans, countrymen|Friends, noders, Everythingians]!

What you see in the node will be the phrase "Friends, noders, Everythingians" highlighted in blue and underlined, indicating the presence of a hardlink.

What you see when you hold your mouse over the hardlink is a small tooltip, containing the phrase "Friends, Romans, countrymen". This tells you it's a pipelink.

What you get when you click the link is something else again. Instead of searching for "Friends, Romans, countrymen", it searches for the double-pipelinked phrase, which is "Julius Caesar".

[commonly misheard lyrics|kiss the sky|kiss this guy]
[nodes with one letter of difference|I'd like to buy the world a coke|I'd like to buy the world coke]
[Wayne's World|Schwing!|Tia Carrera]

This is entirely possible using ordinary HTML, but not currently achievable within E2 writeups. Then there's the other problem. What if you want to add commentary to a hardlink but don't want to change its destination node? In the absence of a second type of pipelink (may I suggest "¦"?), you can simply do this:

[E2|meme soup|E2]

Problem solved.

Now, I see that it may be a little surprising sometimes to click a double-pipelink expecting one thing and getting another. You could compensate for this by perhaps displaying the true destination in the status bar, though personally I'd probably find that even more annoying. It's not a perfect solution. It's not really that much of a problem in the first place. Ah well. File under "never gonna happen".

"The best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question; it's to post the wrong answer."

- XKCD, 'Duty Calls'



The nodegel I imagine is a patchwork-patterned fertile crescent of the arcane, obscure, and brilliant. There a field of barley, and there a field of rye. There a field of sorghum, and there a field with turtles stacked up unto the sky. Myriad gardens of blooming flowers, aromatic citrus fruits, and lost tools yearning to be found.

Perhaps the double pipe link is such a tool. Perhaps you didn't know you were missing it.


Perhaps your pulse races.


In anticipation.



There are four primary types of links within E2: soft, firm, hard, and pipe. There are many more than four possible applications, however, with pipe link functionality being the most intriguing for grammatical abuses.


Typical pipe link usage
Link to the root word -s, -ed, -ing
Link to a related word/term
Link to a related poem/concept
Advanced pipe link usage
External website links - any pipe link where the "go" ([go|show]) begins with 'http://' will create an external link
Homenode shortcuts - [gate] will send you to the gate node, whereas [gate[user]] will send you to gate's homenode.
Did you catch that crafty apostrophe? You can use the homenode shortcut as the "go" of a pipe link: [gate[user]|gate's]
Direct writeup shortcuts - "Zephronias won Prosenoder's Cup 2018 with 'Good Magic'" vs "Zephronias won with 'Good Magic'. The direct link is created with: [Title[by user]]. You can use a direct writeup shortcut as the "go" of a pipe link: [Prosenoder's Cup 2018[by Zephronias]|'Good Magic']
Direct Search page shortcut - [link and link] will send you to a wonderful user-manual node. [link qkx] will send you to a search page for all nodes containing "link". Alternatively, you can append uncommon punctuation such as "link.,." to trigger a search page.
Expert pipe link usage
ABBR tags - [go|<abbr title="whoa">show</abbr>] will display as "show", link to "go", and have a mouseover tag "whoa".
Acronym tags - [go|<acronym title="whoa">show</acronym>] will display as "show", link to "go", and have a mouseover tag "whoa".
E2 HTML etceteras - On E2 only one argument may be passed to an HTML tag. You may align your paragraphs with [p align=justify] but you cannot create a table header with <th colspan=2 align="left">Fruits</th> because the second argument for the header will be ignored. Similarly for <abbr> and <acronym> tags, anything after the first space (or special character of any kind, including punctuation) will not be displayed.


Further Instruction

Archived E2 FAQ: Integrate your writeups
Pipe links and three-dimensionality
The Fine Art of the Pipe Link
E2 HTML tags : Chapter 0
Links on Everything2
root log: May 2009

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