| The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. |
A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English. 1996.
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3. Word Choice: New Uses, Common Confusion, and Constraints
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| § 24. allude / allusion / refer / reference |
| all allusions are references, but are all references allusions? Many people, following the advice of language critics, like to make a distinction between alluding to something and referring to it. By this thinking, allude and allusion should apply to indirect references in which the source is not specifically identified: “Well, we’ll always have Paris,” he told the travel agent, in an allusion to the movie Casablanca. By contrast, refer and reference usually imply specific mention of a source: I will refer to Hamlet for my conclusion: As Polonius says, “Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.” In practice, many writers do not follow this distinction, but it’s certainly worthy of consideration. | 1 |
| More at
refer. | 2 |
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| The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. Copyright © 1996 by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
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