\ref (LaTeX2e unofficial reference manual (November 2018))

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### 7.3 `\ref`

Synopsis:

    \ref{key}

Produces the number of the sectional unit, equation, footnote, figure, …, of the corresponding `\label` command (see \label). It does not produce any text, such as the word ‘Section’ or ‘Figure’, just the bare number itself.

If there is no `\label{key}` then you get something like ‘`LaTeX Warning: Reference `th:GrensThm' on page 1 undefined on input line 11.`’

In this example the `\ref{popular}` produces ‘`2`’. Note that it is a forward reference since it comes before `\label{popular}` so this document would have to be compiled twice.

    The most widely-used format is item number~\ref{popular}.
    \begin{enumerate}
    \item Plain \TeX
    \item \label{popular} \LaTeX
    \item Con\TeX t
    \end{enumerate}

The `cleveref` package includes text such as ‘`Theorem`’ in the reference. See the documentation on CTAN.

Unofficial LaTeX2e reference manual