Markdown allows links to be specified in several ways.

If you enclose a URL or email address in pointy brackets, it will become a link:

<https://google.com>
<[email protected]>

An inline link consists of the link text in square brackets, followed by the URL in parentheses. (Optionally, the URL can be followed by a link title, in quotes.)

This is an [inline link](/url), and here's [one with
a title](https://fsf.org "click here for a good time!").

There can be no space between the bracketed part and the parenthesized part. The link text can contain formatting (such as emphasis), but the title cannot.

Email addresses in inline links are not autodetected, so they have to be prefixed with mailto:

[Write me!](mailto:[email protected])

An explicit reference link has two parts, the link itself and the link definition, which may occur elsewhere in the document (either before or after the link).

The link consists of link text in square brackets, followed by a label in square brackets. (There cannot be space between the two unless the spaced_reference_links extension is enabled.) The link definition consists of the bracketed label, followed by a colon and a space, followed by the URL, and optionally (after a space) a link title either in quotes or in parentheses. The label must not be parseable as a citation (assuming the citations extension is enabled): citations take precedence over link labels.

Here are some examples:

[my label 1]: /foo/bar.html  "My title, optional"
[my label 2]: /foo
[my label 3]: https://fsf.org (The Free Software Foundation)
[my label 4]: /bar#special  'A title in single quotes'

The URL may optionally be surrounded by angle brackets:

[my label 5]: <http://foo.bar.baz>

The title may go on the next line:

[my label 3]: https://fsf.org
  "The Free Software Foundation"

Note that link labels are not case sensitive. So, this will work:

Here is [my link][FOO]

[Foo]: /bar/baz

In an implicit reference link, the second pair of brackets is empty:

See [my website][].

[my website]: http://foo.bar.baz

Note: In Markdown.pl and most other Markdown implementations, reference link definitions cannot occur in nested constructions such as list items or block quotes. Pandoc lifts this arbitrary-seeming restriction. So the following is fine in pandoc, though not in most other implementations:

> My block [quote].
>
> [quote]: /foo

In a shortcut reference link, the second pair of brackets may be omitted entirely:

See [my website].

[my website]: http://foo.bar.baz

To link to another section of the same document, use the automatically generated identifier (see Heading identifiers). For example:

See the [Introduction](#introduction).

or

See the [Introduction].

[Introduction]: #introduction

Internal links are currently supported for HTML formats (including HTML slide shows and EPUB), LaTeX, and ConTeXt.