There is a link to refer to a Stack Overflow question, but does SO provide a shortened URL?
3 Answers
You can remove the whole part after the question ID (in the case of this question, the /is-there-a-way-to-shorten-the-stack-overflow-urls).
The longer, more manual way:
The formula for shortening a question is sitename + .com/q/ + question id
This question's full URL is http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/164194/is-there-a-way-to-shorten-the-stack-overflow-urls
The shortened version is http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/164194.
Similarly, you can do this with any other site in the SE network:
http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/2574/why-add-salt-to-the-water-when-cooking-pasta
becomes
http://cooking.stackexchange.com/q/2574.
The fewer-things-to-delete way:
Use the "share" link underneath any question or answer. The URL you see in the pop-up follows the formula above, but it appends your user ID to the end (so that you can get badges like Announcer). You can copy & paste the whole URL in the "share" box, or strip your user ID from the end. Either way, it's short.
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And if you're not logged in the "share" link doesn't even have a user ID to delete.– ServyCommented Jan 18, 2013 at 19:36
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I wanted to shorten my user page link and the same idea applies:
sitename/u/<user_id>instead of the fullsitenames/user/<user_id>/username– datchungCommented Oct 5, 2023 at 3:00
Some StackExchange general and community pages can be reached by STK's own URL shortener, http://s.tk/. (see What shortened URLs are available through s.tk?)
For questions, however, this seems not to work.
You could always use http://tinyurl.com/ if you want to shorten a URL for sharing.
If you want to name your url w/ Markdown you can always use brackets: [Linking in StackOverflow] (https://stackoverflow.com/editing-help#links)
http://stackoverflow.com/q/14405584What is "SF" though?