[gmw]

Is it necessary (and if so, is there a preferred way?) to acknowledge references to phrases from popular culture?

For example: "Beam me up, Scotty," Billy said.

There are two possible contexts for such a piece of dialogue. In one we may have made it obvious that Billy is a Star Trek fan and so the origin of this phrase is hopefully apparent even if the reader is not familiar with it. In the second we could just expect that the reader is familiar.

In another piece of writing I paraphrase an Oscar Wilde quote, which presents a slightly different problem. I could add, "as Oscar Wilde might have said in this position," but that seems ugly and hopefully unnecessary. The reader will either recognise the source and (hopefully) get a laugh, or blithely read over it, never knowing what they missed.

Is it necessary/usual to acknowledge such snippets? Does the context change the required acknowledgement? I'm thinking that a brief "Acknowledgements" page at the end of the book might be the best way to deal with such cultural references.