How to use html anchor with space?

Question

I wan't to access a wikipedia page with anchor - I'm not sure if this a 'wikipedia' or HTML related question

Access a single word with an anchor is easy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wake-on-LAN#History ✔

But how can I access a header with space?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wake-on-LAN#Principle of operation ✗
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wake-on-LAN#Principle%20of%20operation ✗ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wake-on-LAN#Principleofoperation ✗

For reference, you can right-click a link in the table of contents, and select _Copy link address_ (or whatever it's called in your browser). This way you don't have to guess what the anchor is called on each site ... — Useless, Apr 19 '14 at 15:11

nicael · Accepted Answer · 2014-04-19T15:06:48.937

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Basically, space is %20, but wikipedia uses _
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wake-on-LAN#Principle_of_operation

edited Apr 19 '14 at 15:06

answered Apr 19 '14 at 14:57

nicael

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score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 19 '14 at 15:02

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put underscore for particular heading like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wake-on-LAN#Principle_of_operation it will take you directly on particular heading.please check it

answered Apr 19 '14 at 15:02

Aman Kaushal

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you can test it by clicking on the heading and retrieve the link(on url) form there !! – Aman Kaushal Apr 19 '14 at 15:04
Please *don't* post duplicate answers. See my answer. – nicael Apr 19 '14 at 15:04
nicael , i didn't copy your answer. I had discovered it but mean while you had already post it here. After posting my answer i saw your one. – Aman Kaushal Apr 19 '14 at 15:07

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 06 '18 at 09:47

It's _ for wikipedia links, but...

A more general HTML answer is... web developers can created named anchors (With HTML of the form: <a name="myname">) with whatever name they like. Different websites do different things.

If an anchor name does have a space in it, that's a bit ugly (I'm inclined to say bad web design actually), but it can be linked to by encoding the space as %20. Interestingly you cannot encode this as +, despite that working in the path and query param parts of the URL (this answer has more detail on that)

So what's actually happening on wikipedia, is that the website developers choose to provide named anchors corresponding to every heading on a page, and they choose to name these with the text of the heading (no surprises) except spaces are changed to underscores (which avoids ugly urls and seems like good web design).

How to use html anchor with space?

3 Answers3