[Ken Case]

If you type (or paste) a URL as a word by itself (whitespace on both sides), it will automatically turn into a link as you've already noted.

Once you have a link, you can Right-Click or Control-Click on that link to get a contextual menu that includes the option "Edit Link…". This brings up a popover where you can set the display title to the name you'd like to see in your text. Once you've set a display title, you've made that link its own strong entity—so at that point you can get rid of any whitespace before or after the link.

Hope this helps!