Dash in labels (Was: Labeling and citations issues with spell checker)

Question

I try to separated my LaTeX files into content files, and macro files. In content files, I minimize the use of macros, trying to restrict these to markup only, e.g., \section, \caption. The benefit is that you can spell check only content files, and allow the spell checker to check everything except for words which begin with a backslash.

The main difficulty is with labels and citation. It is customary to use words separated with columns as labels for figures, sections, etc. Even if all words are spelled correctly, my spell checkers gets confused by these. Is there another convention which is friendlier to spell checkers?

A related question is that of citations. Author names are typically a problem, but I guess one should add the main author names to the user defined dictionary, but perhaps someone has a better scheme?

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Does it makes sense to place dash (minus symbol) or slash characters in labels? E.g., something as simple as label{Figure/time/series}?

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Answer 1

In labels you can put everything you want, as long as it is a printable ASCII character which is not special for TeX. Actually, also $, &, #, ^, and _ may be used; even { and `}', provided they are balanced, but this isn't recommended.

Somebody uses the colon for separation, but it's not required; the slashed form you suggest is indeed nice.

Remember: never use accented characters in labels with (pdf)LaTeX; it would be possible with XeLaTeX or LuaLaTeX.