Office of Sponsored Projects

Office of the General Counsel

Peer-to-Peer File Sharing and Copyright Law

What to Do

Integrity & Compliance

Dartmouth Copyright Statement & Guidelines

Attorneys and Staff

Educational Programs

The Attorney-Client Privilege

Do not link to an anchor on the page that does not exist. For example:
linking to `#content` without a valid destination such as `<body id="content"></body>`.

A common web design pattern is to use a named anchor to show an element via JavaScript, e.g.

```html
<a href="#foo" onclick="$('.bar').toggle();">Click me</a>
<div class="bar">
    This is some content.
</div>
``` 

In these cases, the anchor (`#foo`) should point to the `id` of the hidden element:

```html
<a href="#foo" onclick="$('#foo').toggle();">Click me</a>
<div id="foo">
    This is some content.
</div>
```

This way the semantic intent of the link is preserved, even without JavaScript. 
Note that doing so may require modification to your script, to prevent automatic 
scrolling to the named anchor.

linking-to-anchor-on-page-that-does-not-exist

January 2025

December 2024

Dartmouth College

Title / URL	Issues
Office of Sponsored Projectswww.dartmouth.edu/osp/	3
Office of the General Counselwww.dartmouth.edu/ogc/	1
Peer-to-Peer File Sharing and Copyright Lawwww.dartmouth.edu/copyright/peer2peer/	1
What to Dowww.dartmouth.edu/ogc/advice/index.html	1
Peer-to-Peer File Sharing and Copyright Lawwww.dartmouth.edu/copyright/peer2peer/index.html	1
Integrity & Compliancewww.dartmouth.edu/rmi/	1
Dartmouth Copyright Statement & Guidelineswww.dartmouth.edu/copyright/	1
Attorneys and Staffwww.dartmouth.edu/ogc/attorneys.html	1
Educational Programswww.dartmouth.edu/ogc/educational_programs.html	1
The Attorney-Client Privilegewww.dartmouth.edu/ogc/privilege.html	1

Avoid linking to anchors that do not exist

Dartmouth College

Where this issue has occurred