A User's Guide A much-revised and expanded version of this on-
line guide, with hundreds of added examples. An abbreviation of
the Latin word ibidem, meaning “in the same place.” It's
sometimes used in footnotes or endnotes: “Remember that long
citation I gave you in the previous note? — repeat it here.”
Note that it always means the immediately preceding reference.
“Ibid.” is an abbreviation, so it usually gets a period at the
end, but most house styles suggest roman rather than italics. It
was once very common, along with “Id.” (from Latin idem, “the
same” — not “the same place” but “the same work”). Both are
becoming less common in most kinds of writing, though they may
hang on in legal writing. [Entry added 9 May 2007.] A language
is shared by a large community: English, for instance, is the
first language of most people in the UK, America, Canada,
Australia, New Zealand, and much of South Africa, India, and so
on. Thing is, the English spoken in Louisiana is pretty far from
the English spoken in Cape Town