diff --git a/CodeSniffer.php b/CodeSniffer.php
index e6ee68fccb..bc5fb5a010 100644
--- a/CodeSniffer.php
+++ b/CodeSniffer.php
@@ -794,6 +794,17 @@ private function _expandRulesetReference($sniff)
             return $referencedSniffs;
         }
 
+        // As sniffs can't begin with a full stop, assume sniffs in
+        // this format are relative paths and attempt to convert them
+        // to absolute paths. If this fails, let the sniff path run through
+        // the normal checks and have it fail as normal.
+        if (substr($sniff, 0, 1) === '.') {
+            $realpath = realpath(dirname(self::$standardDir).'/'.$sniff);
+            if ($realpath !== false) {
+                $sniff = $realpath;
+            }
+        }
+
         $isDir = false;
         $path  = $sniff;
         if (is_dir($sniff) === true) {
diff --git a/package.xml b/package.xml
index 42bf02dba8..83854fd489 100644
--- a/package.xml
+++ b/package.xml
@@ -34,6 +34,8 @@ http://pear.php.net/dtd/package-2.0.xsd">
   - Standards designed to be installed in the PHPCS Standards dir will now work outside this dir as well
     -- In particular, allows the Drupal CS to work without needing to symlink it into the PHPCS install
     -- Thanks to Peter Philipp for the patch
+  - Rule references for standards, directories and specific sniffs can now be relative in ruleset.xml files
+    -- For example: ref="../MyStandard/Sniffs/Commenting/DisallowHashCommentsSniff.php"
   - Squiz ObjectInstantiationSniff now allows objects to be returned without assinging them to a variable
   - Debug option -vv now shows tokenizer status for CSS files
   - Added support for new gjslint error formats