You have reversed it. I used to reverse it all the time until I came up with a simple way to remember it. Just think of the mv or cp command, the first argument is always the original thing that exists already. It's the same with ln. The first argument is the existing path you want to make a link to.

Yes, and you don’t even need to pass the destination name if it is the same as the source (if your current directory is ~/ of course…)

ln -s ~/Library/CloudStorage/Dropbox

Should a symlink also work to solve the "Dropbox on an external drive" issue that this change will create?

(I suspect it will as a folder is a folder as far as the OS is concerned, but I haven't tinkered much with symlinks).

I don’t think so, unless you are able to create a symlink from the Library/CloudStorage folder to an external drive. I suspect there are some limitations related to this. But I haven’t tried this specific case. But on advice from Dropbox support I did try to symlink from Dropbox to ‘Dropbox (UniName)’ to avoid the space and parentheses in the folder name. This seemingly worked, but after weeks of syncing problems I capitulated and instead link in the other direction… (this isn’t solving the problem of space in the folder name that some software doesn’t like, but syncing now works at least)

I should definitely be able to MAKE the symlink, though I'm not sure how well it will work. Thanks for the input!

Just imagine the "-s" means "source" instead of "soft" and it makes the order easier.