I wanted to share a tip that I use every day when I would like a domain name to look physically appealing, as a domain name, yet not automatically become a hyperlink in many places.
The name of this character is "One Dot Leader" (U+2024) and it is a Unicode character; also referred to as a graphical character.
- . This is a Period.
- ․ This is a One Dot Leader
- Uniregistry.com (period)
- Uniregistry․com (one dot leader)
The above examples essentially “look” the same on the surface but from a coding/technical standpoint, one will automatically create/become a hyperlink (the period) and the other (the one dot leader) will not.
Why does it matter?
Domain people talk about domain names all the time and in order to talk about domain names, it requires you to type out domain names as domain names.
Just because you want to talk about a domain name, does not mean you wish to make the domain a clickable hyperlink, but many services will automatically turn a typed out domain name into a clickable hyperlink, which wasn’t intended or needed.
The underlined hyperlink can make a domain name less visually appealing, reduce character length (Twitter for an example) or even lead an email into a spam folder due to the amount of “links” in an email (best to keep links under 2 in an email and your signature matters). Being a domain/hyperlink may even prevent someone from “posting” a domain name on many websites.
Solution?
Removing the "hyperlink" is often the solution.
I personally use the One Dot Leader Unicode on Twitter in place of the standard period when I make announcements of domain names being sold/acquired in tweets but wish not to have that domain name become a hyperlink. I had long paid attention to the fact that I did not wish to make every domain name that I talked about a hyperlink but never really paid close attention to the appearance during the process of stopping the hyperlink. Since most of the newly acquired domain names I announce do not resolve yet, since they were just purchased, the hyperlink is useless.
The One Dot Leader Unicode has been my solution.
I settled with formatting domains as Example(.)com for a long time prior. Fairly easy to type, it broke/prevented automated hyperlinking and was just what I thought of at the time. Not very visually appealing and takes away from that natural "domain name" look.
An upgrade to Example․com took place after I discovered the One Dot Leader Unicode.
From a physical appearance, using One Dot Leader looks much more appealing. The domain name looks just like a domain name and prevents that domain from becoming a hyperlink. Kind of like magic really.
The one thing I have yet to discover using the One Dot Leader is ease of use. The standard keyboard does not have Unicode on it, so how do you use it when you need it? I tried to do a custom keyboard layout without luck but that would have been nice. It just was not easy for me to do.
My current solution is to simply copy and paste it based on a location I know where one is. If I type One Dot Leader into Google, you can find it. If you have Microsoft Word, you can click Insert/Symbol/More Symbols and then type 2024 and Insert. You can then copy/paste the Unicode for One Dot Leader that way.
You can also bookmark this page and simply copy this: ․
I hope this tip helps you in some way.
