To make a hyperlink in markdown, put the link text in square brackets followed immediately by the URL in parentheses:
Read the [markdown cheat sheet](https://docs-md.com/markdown-cheat-sheet).
No space between ] and ( — that gap is the most common reason a link doesn't render.
How do you link to a section on the same page?
Headings automatically get anchors: lowercase the heading text, replace spaces with hyphens, drop punctuation, and prefix #:
Jump to [the install steps](#how-do-you-install-it).
That's how README tables of contents are built. Renderers differ slightly on edge cases (emoji, duplicate headings get -1 suffixes), so test long anchors.
What are reference-style links?
A form that keeps long URLs out of your prose — a label inline, the URL defined anywhere else in the document (conventionally at the bottom):
See the [spec][cm] and the [GFM extensions][gfm].
[cm]: https://spec.commonmark.org
[gfm]: https://github.github.com/gfm/
Great for documents that cite the same URL repeatedly.
Do bare URLs become links automatically?
In angle brackets, always: <https://docs-md.com>. Pasted bare, it depends on the renderer — GFM autolinks plain URLs, strict CommonMark doesn't. The angle-bracket form is the portable one.
How do you make a link open in a new tab?
Markdown has no syntax for it — that's an HTML behavior. Where raw HTML is allowed:
<a href="https://docs-md.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">docs-md</a>
GitHub strips target from READMEs, so links there always open in the same tab; many documentation generators handle external links via config instead.
Can you add a tooltip to a link?
Yes — an optional quoted title after the URL shows on hover: [docs](https://docs-md.com "Markdown sharing and tools").