From the very end of an article in Essex Countryside magazine, June 1978:
What is the name and purpose of that cryptic "1492E"?
I feel like I've seen this kind of thing somewhere before, but I'm blanking on its function (if I ever knew) or whether it has a name. My guess is that it might be related to reprints — like, if you called up the publisher a few years later and asked to get a copy of "article 1492E," they'd be able to find it faster than if all you knew was the article's title and date? But that's a wild guess.
The question behind the question is: is the "1492E" relevant in some way when citing this article in a bibliography?
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on Wikipedia. But assuming this "1492E" is some kind of unambiguous reference number — which it might not be at all! — then I'd be interested to know about any citation styles, or pretty much any other contexts, in which it might be relevant or important.