When to use the abbreviations f and ff in scientific literature? As discussed in this question, the abbreviations f and ff can be used to refer to following page numbers. For instance, pages 45-46 can be written as 45f. This is quite common in German law, but I wonder if it is commonly accepted for scientific publications? I work in the engineering field, but I would be interested in a more general answer. 

Further questions that come to mind:


Apart from page numbers, can these abbreviations also be used for line numbers and paragraphs (e.g. lines 10ff, paragraphs 3f? This would be useful as I am currently preparing a review of a paper and need to refer to specific parts of the manuscript.
Are there cases in which I should prefer specific notations, such as lines 10-23 instead of 10ff?
Working in STEM fields, I have never seen this form of citations. Instead, on those rare occasions where citations talk about specific locations in a text, people use explicit page and/or line numbers.

I thus suspect that if you used this form of reference in an engineering publication, it will be confusing to your reviewers and readers, and you will be asked to change them.