March 1, 2012
On Lingua Franca, Carol Saller (an editor, no less), calls for burying these increasingly obscure Latin abbreviations in citations. Here’s what she urges instead:
Authors rarely cite a work in full every time it appears. Sometimes they cite it fully the first time it appears in each chapter. Sometimes they give it the full treatment only the first time it’s mentioned in the book. Either way, subsequent mentions of the work are most often shortened to the author’s name, a short title, and a page number. This type of shortening is clear, concise, and difficult to botch—it’s what my group [of academic book manuscript editors] likes best.
The Observatory 