[Turtle91]

In my unworthy opinion, the whole issue of the academics having a specific page number to cite is all about lazy professors. They don't want to spend ANY time confirming an author's source. The problem is that even pBooks have different versions and their page numbers change as well, so now the author has to include the version number in their citation... it's a never ending cycle imposed by professors onto the author (mostly students) because they can.... In my opinion the professor should be familiar enough with most of the main documents in the field they teach, or spend the 5 minutes to read the cited material and BECOME familiar with it... Then the references can simply be a chapter number or a subsection name, etc without having to cite a specific page.

For those non-professor types checking a citation - they are more than likely doing so to LEARN new info. They need to read the surrounding material anyway to get the proper perspective on what is being said. I've seen too many people quote only a sentence here or there and get the whole meaning wrong!

/rant