A corridor does more than connect two rooms; it sets an expectation about what's on the other end. A narrow service corridor tells you not to expect a grand hall. A wide, well-lit hallway with visible signage tells you the destination is meant for you. Hyperlinks do the identical work, and most of them do it badly, because "click here" is a corridor with no signage at all.
Link text as a doorway sign
Descriptive link text — "read the 2025 accessibility report" rather than "click here" — is the digital equivalent of a door plaque. It lets a visitor decide whether to enter before they've committed to walking through. This isn't just good manners; it's how screen reader users navigate entire pages, jumping link to link, which makes vague link text the equivalent of a building with unmarked doors and expecting blind visitors to open each one to find out where it leads.
Dead ends and locked doors
A broken link is a corridor that ends in drywall. A link that opens a login wall with no warning is a door that looks public but is locked, with the sign discovered only after the visitor has already committed to the walk. Both failures share the same root cause: the passage promised something the destination didn't honestly deliver.
Every link is a small architectural promise. The web's worst experiences are mostly broken promises, not broken code.
Treat the humble hyperlink as a corridor, and its design requirements stop being a matter of taste and start being a matter of honesty.