A few LaTeX tricks I just discovered today related to labels and references. Much of these are described in more detail in the Wikibooks guide.

• Beside the standard \label{marker} and \ref{marker} pair, one can also use \pageref{marker} which prints the page number of the references item. So for example, we can label an item \label{fig2}, and refer to it later on by

  See figure~\ref{fig2} on page~\pageref{fig2}.

• The package hyperref. This package inserts hyperlinks into the PDF file created from the tex source so that clicking on references jumps to the correct page. However, it jumps directly to the spot where the \label resides, which can be quirky when we deal with tables or figures (whose \label goes inside the captions which sits below the action item). One can fix this behaviour by using the hypcap package. hyperref also includes a command \autoref which does to section/chapter/etc. what \eqref does to equations. (see below) A similar command (also provided by hyperref is \nameref: it provides the "name text" of the section instead of the section number.
• The package amsmath includes a command called \eqref which automatically puts parenthesis around the label. It saves some typing.
• The package varioref gives a command \vref. It "detects" when a referred object is far away or close to the current text. If the object is on the same page, it behaves like \ref. But if the object is far away, it automatically inserts also some text with \pageref which may make the references easier to find.
• Lastly, the package showkeys (find it here), modifies the \label, \ref, etc. commands to display the "internal key" on the DVI/PDF documents. Useful for proofreading and for typing a long document. (Would've been nice for writing a dissertation...)