[texhax] Sectionining and referencing question

[Peter Flom]

Hello

I am writing a book, and would like a more casual style than is typical
of what I write or what LaTeX produces.  One thing I wanted to do is
avoid the 'academic' style of section numbers (when I showed a draft to
some friends, they commented that this was overly formal).

(It's a book about being learning disabled, and intended for a more or
less general audience)

Per the advice in the LaTeX Companion, I started with

\setcounter{secnumdepth}{-2}

in the preamble, but on typesetting it (pdflatex in WinEdt), all the
chapters, sections and subsections were still numbered.  I looked
through the log, but saw no problems.

How does one produce such a book?
And what is a good method of referring to sections in a more casual
'friendly' way?
(e.g. when I say "I talk about this in XXXXX", what should I have?

Thanks!

Peter