Talk:Cf.
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Differing and conflicting
[edit]I tried to tidy this up a bit, but I think the contention that there is differing and conflicting advice is at least exaggerated. Was this written by someone who had discovered that 'cf.' didn't mean what they thought it meant, and was finding it difficult to accept that? 'Cf.' means 'compare' and is used to point to a reference that gives a different view to the one that has just been put forward ('The prevailing view is that blah blah blah (Smith, 2012; Brown, 2015: Robinson, 2021; but cf. Jones, 2019).'). Quite a lot of people think it means 'see', and I suspect some of those people think that, being Latin, it looks cleverer than 'see', and use it for that reason. The Wex entry itself is not great: it looks as though it was written by two different people and doesn't hang together very well. But I don't want to take stuff out wholesale, just in case there is a valid point to be made. Snugglepuss (talk) 11:53, 5 September 2025 (UTC)