+-------------------------------------------------------------------+ | LaTeX Note 009 jodys@helluin.org | | References 12/18/2010 | | v0.01 | +-------------------------------------------------------------------+ LaTeX can keep track of cross references, for instance if you want to refer to a given figure in a text you can say; "as the data in Figure \ref{fig:mystunningdata} show!" Latex doesn't really know *what* you are referring too, the cross-references are completely independent of tables, figures, etc. The cross-references allow you to associate a name with something that is auto-numbered (sections, chapters, figures, equations, etc.) and then refer to those things by name, rather than by number. The way that you do this is with \label{<labelname>} labelname takes becomes a reference to whatever is the nearest enclosure; for instance \section{My Totally Rad Section!} \label{sec:totally-rad-section The number of the current section, hereafter referred to as Section \ref{sec:totally-rad-section}, is \ref{sec:totally-rad-section}. There are no real requirements for naming, but the following are used by convention; sec:<section name> -- Used for chapters,sections, subsections, etc. fig:<figure name> -- used for all figures tab:<table name> -- used for all tables eq:<equation name> -- used for mathematical equations For equations in amsmath, there is a special \eqref for referring to equations--all it does is add parentheses according to the publication standard from AMS Example; \begin{align*} \label{eq:stunning-equation} a = b \end{align*} As we can see in Equation \eqref{eq:stunning-equation}, a \textbf{must} equal b!