: Re: How to display URLs in a textbook? I am writing a textbook which contains some lists of recommended Web sites. Unlike the question How should be the format for literature references that are

@Samaraweera193

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STD 66 (which is RFC 3986 currently) is the standard for URIs.

It contains a section "Delimiting a URI in Context", in which it says (emphasis mine):

URIs are often transmitted through formats that do not provide a
clear context for their interpretation. For example, there are many
occasions when a URI is included in plain text; examples include text
sent in email, USENET news, and on printed paper. In such cases, it
is important to be able to delimit the URI from the rest of the text,
and in particular from punctuation marks that might be mistaken for
part of the URI.

It lists the following methods:

within double-quotes:

"http://example.com/"

within angle brackets:

<http://example.com/>

by using whitespace:

     example.com/

Is it more formal and professional to include or exclude "http://" and the "/" at the end?

You should definitely include the URI scheme. While currently most people and also tools like browsers assume http, this can change in the future. And even today, some Web pages might not work with http (e.g., https only), some documents might be available via ftp, etc.

If the URIs don’t contain a path (e.g., example.com/), the trailing slash can be omitted. It doesn’t make a difference. However, a trailing slash in an URI path (e.g., the last slash in example.com/foo/) should definitely be included. If you omit it, the URI might point to a different (or non-existent) document (if not now, then maybe in the future).

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