Dear Colleagues:
I'm a little surprised that there has been so much confusion about this. To be sure I've been doing it correctly all these years, I've just checked 5 different reference books from my own shelf, including the MLA Handbook, Fowler's, Harper's Dictionary of Foreign Terms and my First Year Latin and they all agree that cf is the abbreviation for the Latin verb "confer" meaning "to compare". It is quite standard usage along with all of the other Latin abbreviations commonly used in academic references and frequently placed within parentheses, e.g. (okay, that's an exception)
q.v. = quod vide: which see
i.e. = id est: that is
et al. = et alii: and others
sic = thus
I hope this clears things up.
Mary McKinley, PhD
Professor of Marketing
ESCEM Tours-Poitiers
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Subject: MG-ED-DV Digest - 9 Feb 2008 to 10 Feb 2008 (#2008-30)
There are 7 messages totalling 2745 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. Exact meaning of citing (cf. X & Y, 2006) (7)
To be precise: cf is an abbreviation of conform, so cf.
X&Y, 2006 means in conformity with X&y, 2006=94.
cf. has always meant to me, compare with I think it's
an old stenographer's notation.