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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/14748
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

In a hypertext document, when the title of a short work (which is enclosed in quotation marks) is a link should the quotation marks be included as part of the link text? Do common style guides generally concur on how this should be handled?

It _seems_ that such quotation marks should be included as part of the link text, since italics (and until CSS3 underscore) are naturally included as part of the text and ::before and ::after CSS content<sup>1</sup> is considered by default as part of the element's text (though such content can be independently styled). An argument could also be made that a link references the object itself and not the title text designating the object, and so HTML should use `<a><cite>Title</cite></a>`.

On the other hand, such decorations are not part of the text proper and so might reasonably be treated as external content.

A very brief search did not find any examples of short titles used as links. One common use, at least for linking to PDF documents, is to include a separate link text (e.g., 'For more detailed coverage of these issues see "Title Decorations in Hypertext Documents" (PDF)'). In fact, in online publication lists, enclosing paper titles in quotation marks seems not to be universal practice.

A more general question would be whether such decorations should be considered part of the element's content with respect to styling. (E.g., if \<q\> styling used some form of quotation mark enclosure _and_ foreground color, should the quotation marks use the foreground color styling of the quoted text.) For CSS, the **default** styling includes ::before and ::after content as part of the element's content, hinting that the World Wide Web Consortium at least considers such the common use.

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<sup>1</sup> which could be used to insert such decorations using rules like: `cite[class~="short_work"]::before {content: '"'} cite[class~="short_work"]::after {content: '"'}`

Original score: 2