# Compact URIs (CURIEs)

**URL:** <https://talk.commonmark.org/t/compact-uris-curies/553>\
**Category:** Extensions\
**Created:** [September 10, 2014, 9:51pm UTC](https://talk.commonmark.org/t/compact-uris-curies/553 "2014-09-10T21:51:49Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 10

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Burt\_Harris](https://talk.commonmark.org/user_avatar/talk.commonmark.org/burt_harris/32/368_2.png) [@Burt\_Harris](https://talk.commonmark.org/u/Burt_Harris)\
**Post date:** [October 22, 2014, 11:10pm UTC](https://talk.commonmark.org/t/compact-uris-curies/553/10 "2014-10-22T23:10:58Z")

</div>

> [@chrisalley](#):
>
> My concern is that if we start adding lots of variables, Markdown files will quickly feel like programming code.

I’m not sure understand the concern, in particular what it has to do with programming code? Perhaps it’s because you’re considering these to be variables that you see a parallel, I wouldn’t characterize them that way.

Lots of professions (perhaps most of them) have specialized vocabularies (including acronyms and initialisms) they use like code in writing and speech, and such vocabularies tend to cluster. For example, I sat down with an investment advisor today who used a whole set of words from a different vocabulary than I’m used to, e.g. _recharacterization_, _REIT_, _RMD_, and _Roth_ to pick out examples starting with a single letter. All of these are terms that might show up in a financial glossary.

I see nothing particularly programming-like about such specialized vocabularies, and being able to pick a short prefixes to clarify terminology in writing with hyperlinks could be quite valuable, particularly when combined with a subject-matter specific glossary recourse on the internet.

```plaintext
...after age 70.5, [[F:RMD]]s could impact your tax bracket. A [[F:Roth]] is not subject to RMDs during the owners lifetime.

```

The practical applications could go well beyond simply shortcutting hyperlinks however, because additional semantics (beyond the URI base) can be associated with a prefix. As a simple example (and to illustrate why I think special sytax for prefix declaration is justified), perhaps the prefix is declared with something like this:

```plaintext
<?prefix F: http://www.investopedia.com/terms?q= !hideprefix> ?>

```

Where the `!hideprefix` indicates the **F:** prefix should be suppressed in the hyperlink text, so the result might look like:

> …after age 70.5, [RMD](http://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/requiredminimumdistribution.asp)s could impact your tax bracket. A [Roth](http://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/rothira.asp) is not subject to RMDs during the owner’s lifetime.

---

_[View the full topic](https://talk.commonmark.org/t/compact-uris-curies/553)._