A few questions.
Do you have the Options > Write correct invalid nested XHTML automatically turned on (checked)?
Did you write the actual link code or let WordPress try to handle it?
Does it effect your older posts? Are their links doing the same thing?
Did you check (EDIT) the post and check to make sure the closing tag is in the right place? Obvious, but just checking.
This might help us narrow a few things down.
1) Yes, the “correct invalid next XHTML” is checked.
2) Yes, I type in the actual code myself. In this case, I tried writing it several times. I would publish the letter without it, and then tried re-editing it, with the code. Same problem.
3) As far as I can tell, no other posts have been affected.
4) Yes. In fact, what you see above was copied directly from the post, before and after hitting the “publish” button.
Please repeat the post in your blog, and give us a link ? It will be much easier to see and discover the reason.
Here is the link to the blog article:
http://pontifications.classicalanglican.net/?p=736
To help you further, here is the text with code <b>before</b> I clicked on publish. I have substituted brackets for the other symbol (whatever it’s called):
In any case, J. Budziszewski is a very interesting and incisive writer. He is professor of Government and Philosophy at the University of Texas, as well as the popular [http://www.boundless.org/departments/theophilus/]”Ask Theophilus”[/a] columns.
In this 2003 [a href=http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2003/125/22.0.html]Christianity Today interview[/a], Dr. Budziszewski speaks of his conversion from atheism to evangelical Christian faith.
<b>After</b> clicking “publish” I get the following:
In any case, J. Budziszewski is a very interesting and incisive writer. He is professor of Government and Philosophy at the University of Texas, as well as the popular [a href=http://www.boundless.org/departments/theophilus/]”Ask Theophilus” columns.
In this 2003 [a href=http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2003/125/22.0.html]Christianity Today interview[/a], Dr. Budziszewski speaks of his conversion from atheism to evangelical Christian faith.
I’ll leave the blog article as is for a while, but I’ll need to correct it, by deleting the “Ask Theophilus” link, fairly soon. When I delete the “Ask Theophilus” link, everything else works just fine, including all the other links in the article.
oops, the first link obviously should read:
[a href=http://www.boundless.org/departments/theophilus/]
I figured out the problem! It was the concluding backslash in the URL. I deleted it (http://www.boundless.org/departments/theophilus) and now the link works properly.
Odd, but I’m glad you figured it out. There are many sites that end with a slash (a forward slash / by the way. Backslash is \.) in a hyperlink so this is strange, but I’m glad it’s working now.
I just wanted to report to the developers that the problem that I noted above, which is caused by the presence of a forward slash at the end of the URL, happens even when archived posts are opened. I noticed the problem today when I looked at a post that I had written six months ago. I had to go in and redit it, eliminating the forward slash, in order to fix it.