Ah good point about the stacks. However, I think the point still stands.. an argument being a pointer just defines its type, while an argument being a reference

Ah good point about the stacks. However, I think the point still stands.. an argument being a pointer just defines its type, while an argument being a reference does not define its type, but that it's an alias to another variable. Again, I think the issue is with terminology as someone else pointed out. Certainly a C pointer can be considered a reference when using the normal English definition of a reference, but "pass by reference" has a specific meaning, and in C you can't "pass by reference"