"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