Don’t duplicate link text in the title attribute

The default templates supplied by several Content Management Systems (CMSs) seem to duplicate the link text in navigational links into each link’s title attribute.

I don’t know why they do this. It could be because the developers believe it will improve accessibility or that search engines like it. Either way, repeating link text in the title attribute doesn’t do the end user any good.

All it does is add repetitive noise and increase page size. It only makes sense to specify title text for links if the title text offers more or different information than the actual link text. Even in those cases, title text should be non-essential, since it will not be available to all users.

This post is a Quick Tip. Background info is available in Quick Tips for web developers and web designers.

Posted on March 31, 2009 in Quick Tips, Usability