diff --git a/docs/tools/linkify.js b/docs/tools/linkify.js
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+++ b/docs/tools/linkify.js
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+// Work in progress: tooling to linkify the HTML produced from
+// the MessageFormat 2 markdown.
+// this has been tested on the tr35-messageformat.html file
+// but not implemented in LDML45
+function linkify() {
+  const terms = findTerms();
+  const missing = new Set();
+  const links = document.querySelectorAll("em");
+  links.forEach((item) => {
+    const target = generateId(item.textContent);
+    if (terms.has(target)) {
+      const el = item.lastElementChild ?? item;
+      el.innerHTML = `<a href="#${target}">${item.textContent}</a>`;
+    } else {
+      missing.add(target);
+    }
+  });
+  // report missing terms
+  // (leave out sort if you want it in file order)
+  Array.from(missing).sort().forEach((item)=> {
+      console.log(item);
+  });
+}
+
+function findTerms() {
+  const terms = new Set();
+  document.querySelectorAll("dfn").forEach((item) => {
+    // console.log(index + ": " + item.textContent);
+    const term = generateId(item.textContent);
+    // guard against duplicates
+    if (terms.has(term)) {
+        console.log("Duplicate term: " + term);
+    }
+    terms.add(term);
+    item.setAttribute("id", term);
+  });
+  return terms;
+}
+
+function generateId(term) {
+  const id = term.toLowerCase().replaceAll(" ", "-");
+  if (id.endsWith("rategies")) {
+    // found in the bidi isolation strategies
+    return id.slice(0, -3) + "y";
+  } else if (id.endsWith("s") && id !== "status") {
+    // regular English plurals
+    return id.slice(0, -1);
+  }
+  return id;
+}