If I hover over the the "link" thingy at the bottom of an answer I get the tooltip "permalink to this answer". What does that mean and do? I ask this because
a) I don't know,
b) because I want a quick way, when I am looking at a question with multiple answers, of getting a link to a specific answer (rather than a question) so that I can copy and paste it into another answer.
Summary: what all links were supposed to be, but for various reasons weren't.
The link link at the bottom of each answer produces a permanent link to that answer. Regardless of whether the answer is moved to a different question, or voted onto a different page (for questions with many answers), or both the question and answer are edited so heavily that they no longer bear any resemblance to their original form, that link will always take you to it. At least, until the answer is deleted.
Ok, so it's a semi-perma-link... They all are, really.
Point is, you can click it, and copy the URL out of your address bar, and spread it around freely, confident in the knowledge that it won't stop working just because the question rolled off the front page or got re-titled.
In Chrome and Firefox, you can right-click on the 'link' text and select 'copy link location'. This will give you a link to the question, which you can then paste to your heart's content.
FYI, the behavior of the link control has changed, following this question on ui.stackexchange.
