Everything about Reference
Relationship between objects
In logic, a reference is a relationship between objects in which one object designates, or acts as a means by which to connect to or link to, another object. The first object in this relation is said to refer to the second object. It is called a name for the second object. The next object, the one to which the first object refers, is called the referent of the first object. A name is usually a phrase or expression, or some other symbolic representation. Its referent may be anything – a material object, a person, an event, an activity, or an abstract concept. Wikipedia →
🧭 Start here: a 6-step reading path
- Read the overview: ReferenceA 5-minute orientation
- Skim a recent paper: A draft human pangenome referenceInfluential work since 2022
- Pick up a classic book: The Elements of StyleThe most-reprinted book on the subject
- Read the landmark paper: Reporting physisorption data for gas/solid systems with special reference to the determination of surface area and porosity (Recommendations 1984)Cited 22,916 times
- Go sideways: Proper name (philosophy)A closely related topic
- Go sideways: Descriptivist theory of namesA closely related topic
📖 Definitions
Noun A relationship or relation (to something).
Noun A measurement one can compare (some other measurement) to.
Noun Information about a person, provided by someone (a referee) with whom they are well acquainted.
Noun A person who provides this information; a referee.
🏆 Landmark papers (most cited)
Reporting physisorption data for gas/solid systems with special reference to the determination of surface area and porosity (Recommendations 1984)
Physisorption of gases, with special reference to the evaluation of surface area and pore size distribution (IUPAC Technical Report)
RSEM: accurate transcript quantification from RNA-Seq data with or without a reference genome
Full-length transcriptome assembly from RNA-Seq data without a reference genome
A global reference for human genetic variation
Preliminary reference Earth model
De novo transcript sequence reconstruction from RNA-seq using the Trinity platform for reference generation and analysis
KEGG as a reference resource for gene and protein annotation
🆕 Influential since 2022
A draft human pangenome reference
Greengenes2 unifies microbial data in a single reference tree
GENCODE: reference annotation for the human and mouse genomes in 2023
GENCODE 2025: reference gene annotation for human and mouse
Oxford Nanopore R10.4 long-read sequencing enables the generation of near-finished bacterial genomes from pure cultures and metagenomes without short-read or reference polishing
📚 Books worth reading
The Elements of StyleWilliam Strunk, Jr., E. B. White · 1920
AnatomyHenry Gray F.R.S., Henry Vandyke Carter · 1858
The World Almanac for KidsJudith S. Levey, Elaine Israel · 1995
On CookingSarah R. Labensky, Alan M. Hause · 1994
Misère de la philosophieKarl Marx · 1847
The Origins of TotalitarianismHannah Arendt · 1951
MythologyEdith Hamilton · 1940- 📕The College GuidebookRachel Winston · 2022
Ranked by number of editions on Open Library, a rough measure of how lasting a book is.
🔗 Related topics
- Proper name (philosophy) In the philosophy of language, a proper name – examples include a name of a specific person or place – is a name which ordinarily is taken to uniquely…
- Descriptivist theory of names In the philosophy of language, the descriptivist theory of proper names (also descriptivist theory of reference) is the view that the meaning or semantic…
- Referent A referent (/ˈrɛfərənt/ REF-ər-ənt) is an entity to which a name – a linguistic expression or other symbol – refers. For example, in the sentence "Mary…
- Sense and reference In the philosophy of language, the distinction between sense and reference was an idea of the German philosopher and mathematician Gottlob Frege in 1892…
- Frege's puzzles Frege's puzzles are puzzles about the semantics of proper names, although related puzzles also arise in the case of indexicals. Gottlob Frege (1848–1925)…
- Direct reference theory A direct reference theory (also called referentialism or referential realism) is a theory of language that claims that the meaning of a word or expression…
- Coreference In linguistics, coreference, sometimes written co-reference, occurs when two or more expressions refer to the same person or thing; they have the same…
- Anaphora (linguistics) In linguistics, anaphora (/əˈnæfərə, -frə/) is the use of an expression whose interpretation depends upon another expression in context (its antecedent)…