LaTeX is a powerful tool for cross-referencing.

Use it.

Instead of saying, “In a later section…”, “In the next section…”, or “Below…”, say, “In Section 4…”. This allows readers to quickly pinpoint the thing you are referencing. If you have TeX configured correctly (using hyperref), then references will automatically include a internal link to the given place in the document, allowing readers to immediately jump there.

This advice also applies when citing other works. If a citation is, say, an entire book, then the reader must spend time searching through it to find what you were talking about. When citing in TeX, the \cite macro has an optional argument for giving a locator. For example, to cite Theorem 3.4 in khalil_nonlinear_2014, use \cite[Theorem 3.4]{khalil_nonlinear_2014}.

Some examples

  • “Results presented in the next section…” \(\implies\) “Lemma 3 in Section 4…”
  • “In the above inequality…” \(\implies\) “In inequality (4)…”
  • “This theorem is given by Kahlil in [4]” \(\implies\) “This theorem is given by Kahlil in [Theorem 3.4, 4]”.
% Add support for mixing colors, such as "black!30!blue"
\usepackage{xcolor}

% Enable hyperlinks
\usepackage[]{hyperref}
\hypersetup{
    final,                   % Include links even if document is in 'draft' mode.
    hidelinks,               % Prevent boxes from being drawn around links in some editors.
    colorlinks=true, 
    linkcolor=black,         % TOC, links to labeled equations and environments
    urlcolor=black!30!blue,  % URLS including links in references  
    citecolor=black!30!blue, % In-line citations  
}