Printing \ref as a letter

Question

When using \label and \ref, can I get the \ref to display as a letter instead of a number (so if \ref is 3, it will print c instead)?

Answer 1

The default counter representation is \arabic (or numerical). If you want a counter to be referenced alphabetically rather than numberically, then you can redefine the representation using

\newcounter{mycount}
\renewcommand{\themycount}{\alph{mycount}}

\the<counter> refers to the representation of the counter. So you're essentially redefining it from being displayed as \arabic to \alph.

---

If you don't care about what is displayed and how it's referenced, then the following will work:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fmtcount}% http://ctan.org/pkg/fmtcount
\begin{document}
\setcounter{section}{2}
\section{This is a section}\label{ref:section}
This is section~\ref{ref:section}. This is section~\aaalphnum{\ref{ref:section}}.
\end{document}

The fmtcount package can easily be used to convert between different number formats.

Answer 2

Any counter can be printed alphabetically using the command \alph{counter}. You can make that work with \label and \ref by redefining the counter you are referencing to print things that way. For example, to refer to sections by letter, write:

\documentclass{article}
\renewcommand\thesection{\alph{section}}
\begin{document}
 \section{A section}
 \label{s:a section}

 In section \ref{s:a section}\dots
\end{document}

Of course, all your sections will be "lettered" rather than numbered; however, it is very confusing to refer to a numbered item by letter, so this is probably what you should do anyway if you want references to print letters.