From: utzoo!decvax!yale-com!leichter Newsgroups: net.nlang Title: Re: Re: and still more surprising words - (nf) Article-I.D.: yale-com.927 Posted: Sat Feb 19 09:16:37 1983 Received: Sun Feb 20 06:25:03 1983 References: uiucdcs.1495 One of my complaints - while we are on this topic - is the (over)use of "reference" as a verb. "The article referenced on page 5" could just as well be "the article refered to on page 5". "Refer" has been there as the verb for a long time; "reference" is a "nouned" form. Why "verb" it? (Now some etymologist will discover that "refer" is actually a "verbed" form of the original "reference", in which case I will hide my head in shame.) I say "overuse" because there is a subtle difference between "refer to" and "reference" - "refer to" is more general - I can "refer to" a book without giving you enough information to find it - but when I "reference" a book, there seems (to me) to be an implication that a full bibliographic reference is in there. In most cases that I've seen "reference" used as a verb, though, this writer is not making use of this distinction. -- Jerry decvax!yale-comix!leichter