Greg A Woods <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> [ On Tuesday, September 12, 2000 at 17:15:25 (-0700), Tom Werges wrote: ]
>> In my opinion, referring to a standard document by the last name of its
>> author is not snooty or superior.
> I suppose that depends on who you are. In my opinion it does very much
> the opposite of giving credit to the author, especially when used
It's very common practice in academia and has been picked up by some
related communities. Consider "Stevens" for _Advanced Programming in the
Unix Environment_ or _Unix Network Programming_ depending on context,
"Knuth" for _The Art of Computer Programming_, "K&R" for _The C
Programming Language_, etc.
When I was still in school, it was very common to refer to any textbook by
the last name of the author, primarily because textbooks often have very
normal and undistinctive names. The only way one could keep track of
different physics textbooks was by author, for example; otherwise, you end
up having to remember if the book was _Physics_, _Elementary Physics_,
_Introductory Physics_, _Physics: An Introduction_, or something else that
sounds almost the same.
--
Russ Allbery ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
