when i am linking to a page in the same folder.
should i link like this:
<a href="http://ranktips.com/directory-list">Directory List</a>
or like this
<a href="directory-list.htm">Directory List</a>
would not the first pass pagerank better?

I don't know about page rank, but generally you would use the second one:
<a href="directory-list.htm">Directory List</a>

-Micah

I personally always use absolute referances.

so i ahve one vote for each

It makes no difference at all.

I'd use relative linking. It's a tiny bit less work for the browser, saves a couple of bytes in the HTML file, and quicker to type. There's no advantage to absolute linking.

Oh yeah, and if you move the location of any of your pages, or want to change domain names, and simply for client side testing purposes, absolute links will be a lot more work...