Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (chemistry)

message: I've been having trouble figuring out what to do with Trisodium phosphate and Sodium phosphate.  These both refer to the same chemical.  It seems like Trisodium phosphate is the name commercially used for selling the chemical as a cleaning chemical.  Sodium phosphate is the name used on food ingredients lists, etc., and I *think* is the "systematic" chemical name, but I'm pretty rusty on my chemistry.  Does anyone have any suggestions?  I assume that we want one article with a redirect, rather than two separate articles on the two uses, but I could be wrong.  -- Creidieki 19:29, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: A non-IUPAC solution may be to use sodium phosphate as Na3PO4, sodium hydrogenphosphate as Na2HPO4 and sodium dihydrogenphosphate as NaH2PO4.  I learnt it this way to learn acidic salts, and I think this should be a convention.  The same could apply for other acid salts like sodium hydrogencarbonate (NaHCO3).  -x42bn6 06:52, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Sodium phosphates

message: While tidying NMR spectroscopy, Nuclear magnetic resonance, and Phosphorus, I noticed that sometimes we have e.g. 31P and sometimes we have e.g. Phosphorous-31.  It seems like the latter would be clearer to non-chemists, and easier to link to the article on the element, but also a bit clumsy to use repeatedly.  I was also thinking there should be something indicating "this is the isotope of Phosphorous that has an atomic mass of 31" to the novice reader, though I'm not sure whether that should be in the element's article, in some footnote, or someplace else.  I thought this would be a good place to get some feedback on that and perhaps establish a working standard. -- Beland 04:11, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  References to isotopes 

message: Are we meant to be using systematic names all the time except for the exceptions named on this page, or are we meant to use whatever we feel best? --PhiJ 09:21, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: We can't have a policy which says "use systematic names all the time" because systematic names are not uniquely defined. This page offers some guidelines on the basis of the titles of existing articles on chemicals; read it, then use whatever you feel best. If you want advice about a specific chemical, you can always ask at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chemicals. Physchim62 (talk) 09:31, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Systematic names 

message: So IUPAC prefers caesium.
But I still hold that Cesium should be the title of the wikipedia entry.
Firstly, Cesium is the spelling used by the American Chemical Society and given that most wikipedia users are American I think that should be reflected. (Source?)
But more importantly,
"Generally, article naming should give priority to what the majority of English speakers would most easily recognise, with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity, while at the same time making linking to those articles easy and second nature." - (By this argument we should start using cave man speech and dumb down our language, which you should see is wrong.)  
The caesium spelling flies clearly in the face of this general rule. 
1. Majority of English speakers clearly recognise Cesium better than Caesium (Source?)
2. Cesium maintains the reasonable minimum of ambiguity
3. Linking to those articles is not second nature given that most people will use cesium in writing other articles.
Of course, it is only a general rule, but look at the reason given for breaking this rule.
"With the onset of computer searching of databases it became necessary to standardise these spellings as follows"
Right, if that's the logic, we should use the spelling most commonly found in databases, Cesium!
Although it might sound jingoist, most scientific databases are run from American universities and organizations. These use primarily the American spelling cesium. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Maquih (talk • contribs) 17:14, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm a Brit working in the US, and I like to think I'm "bilingual".  I can accept your view in general, and even support it in some cases, but that's not a reason to support this particular change, IMHO.  Do Americans learn about Julius Cesar in school?  I'm sure that the IUPAC committee weighed things carefully when making their choice.  On Wikipedia we try to follow the IUPAC recommendations as the default, and there is no compelling argument here to go against that.  I hope that in time, the ACS will recommend caesium, the same way the RSC has begun to recommend sulfur.  Walkerma 04:21, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  We don't learn about Julius Cesar, but in French, Spanish and Portugese countries they learn about César, and name their kids that, also. In those languages the diphthong has been absorbed into a mere acute accent mark (so far as I can tell, it's a diacritical mark but not actually a diaeresis, or should I write, diaresis...). And the English used to write "Cæsar," but no longer do. In other languages it's Kaiser or Czar (that's a transliteration). Every country has the right to spell their language the way they'd like to. For the English Wikipedia, I think that popular vote among English speakers should win, and that's the American spelling. Leave traditional British spelling for articles about U.K. topics. IUPAC is a bunch of snobs and they don't always go with what's most used in the world of English-speaking chemists, but what's most politically correct and won't offend the Brits. In any case, whether IUPAC "prefer" Caesium or not, they don't forbid or even discourage Cesium, and their heads are not going to blow up if we all use it here. I also refuse to write hæmatology. SBHarris 19:05, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

text: Neither is your head going to blow up if you would simply add an "a" in front of the "e" to write caesium. Your post doesn't give any reason why WP should change the policies which have done it good for several years now. Physchim62 (talk) 18:25, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

text: On scientific articles we should avoid any one POV and the only way to do that is to use the IUPAC preferred spellings. That is the only reliable source we have. Anything else is just one POV. If we want to have any scientific credibility we use international standards for spellings, SI units and so on.  The question however has also arisen about the spelling in non-scientific articles and there I would be more flexible, dealing with it on an issue by issue basis. --Bduke (talk) 01:53, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd have to counter that relying on IUPAC is, itself, simply a POV, and no better than than arbitrarily choosing the ACS over the RSC. When there is disagreement between large, respected organizations, picking one over the other can only come down to POV, regardless of whether one is specifically tasked with the subject of the disagreement. My POV is simply that, when you have multiple conflicting bodies, it's better to go with the more widely accepted one. At least when people are attempting to search for something. For things like the article "caesium" vs. the article "cesium," it's obviously irrelevant due to redirects. But if you're trying to search within articles, it becomes more problematic. I believe the discussion should really be based on the merits of the two names, instead of citing IUPAC, the RSC, the ACS, or the IEEE, or whatever.--Cubic Hour (talk) 07:30, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I just do not follow that argument in any way. IUPAC is the international body. ACS and RSC are national societies, so have a national POV. The body that is charged with resolving differences between usage in different countries is the best source we have. How do you know that the american POV is the most widely accepted? Your Google Scholar results may go back before the IUPAC decision was made. Why are you so opposed to international standards? --Bduke (talk) 08:08, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Let's not make it personal. I personally, am all in favor of international standards. That's irrelevant though. What I object to here is presenting the IUPAC standard as the accepted standard, since it's not (as evidenced by the literature) and it makes finding (by searching for terms) more difficult for the overwhelming number of people. Those google scholar searches are the same regardless of dates, by the way. Here's caesium and here's cesium, over the past ten years only, which presumably would have given the IUPAC standard (first proposed in '90, right?) time to kick in. But, as can be seen by the ratios, it clearly didn't. Once again, I love standards, but I think it's bad for the average user to enforce "standards" that aren't accepted (especially when the standard is actually in the minority).--Cubic Hour (talk) 11:20, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

text: To suggest that the majority of the world is wrong is —quite simply— wrong. There is no "Academy of English." What is "right" is what is common. English is full of misspelled words from many other languages. They become "right" when they are commonly accepted. "Cesium" is no more misspelled than "Caesar." Is there any compelling argument for using the less common (and harder to search for) spelling, apart from a largely ignored recommendation from IUPAC? If not, I'm strongly in favor of changing this convention.--Cubic Hour (talk) 14:22, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The reason we have international bodies is precisely to resolve issues like this and produce a consensus.  The chemists active on Wikipedia have all been happy to work with the IUPAC recommendations for several years.  The spellings were chosen after much serious deliberation by prominent chemists representing the majority of the world, and they have not been overturned. I would trust these decisions more than a Google search, which can after all give some funny results! Walkerma (talk) 14:55, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I believe that google scholar search makes my point... the misused version (whether or not all those spellings of "phosphorous" are misused) has far fewer hits.--Cubic Hour (talk) 15:14, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Surely you mean that the misused version—the one with no historical or etymological justification, ie, cesium—has more hits… Physchim62 (talk) 16:57, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Physchim: Chill. I'm trying to make a valid point about ease of use. It's harder for people to find something that's not spelled the way the majority of the world spells it. Do you have anything to say in regards to that, or is this arrogant "no historical or etymological" response the best response you have?--Cubic Hour (talk) 17:23, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: If your only response is to tell me to "chill", and then to claim that I'm being "arrogant", I really don't see where this discussion is going to get us. As for finding data, you can type "cesium" or "cesium chloride" or a host of other North American spellings into the "search" box and go directly to our articles. Articles usually also include North American spellings in their first lines, and so are easily found using either the MediaWiki search engine or external resources such as Google. Physchim62 (talk) 13:48, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Check out Plasma electrolytic oxidation, for example. It's a perfect example of this. If you're searching for "aluminum," you won't find it. An analagous example is what got me interested in this problem also. I told an undergraduate student I was helping to go check out the wiki site on a few different semiconductor components (which I knew to be good pages) and, his lack of knowledge of British spellings (being in the Netherlands, and educated in the more common spellings) made him unable to find the article. I've fixed that page already.--Cubic Hour (talk) 16:31, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

text: I would agree, if it were in fact an international standard. If something is unnaccepted by the majority of the scientific literature, that implies to me it's not much of a standard.--Cubic Hour (talk) 16:31, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: It is the IUPAC standard. If you are correct, then IUPAC will change it and come into line with you. I suggest you canvass IUPAC for the change rather than Wikipedia. --Bduke (talk) 22:52, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

text: Deuterium and tritium are IUPAC preferred names for these isotopes (rule I-3.5.1, page 38); only the symbols 2H and 3H are recommended, for reasons of alphabetical ordering in formulae, although the symbols D and T may also be used. Physchim62 (talk) 17:17, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

text: This is interesting. Thanks for contributing it. Where we are talking about different names, particularly in organic chemistry where the preferred names are very complex, I would agree with you. However, for elements we have to decide between two different spellings and I still think the IUPAC preferred spelling should be used with the other being a redirect. However, I admit I may have a POV here. I'm British. We rapidly started teaching "sulfur" rather than "sulphur", just as we rapidly started using kJ rather than kcal. The Americans have been dragging their feet ever since and it is very annoying, particularly where I have published in American journals largely because the vast majority of papers in one of the fields I have worked on has been published in one American journal. Otherwise I try to avoid publishing in American journals because of this. Nevertheless I do not see the Project changing its usage on this. --Bduke (talk) 04:34, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I hope this doesn't get conflated with US resistance to the metric system, which really is horrid. In our defence, there's alway somebody out there who has a pinapple up the wrong way about something, even when you think you've got it metricized. In medicine, American doctors worked very hard to get blood concentrations in mg/L and so on, and then somebody decided it all had to be in milli or micro or nanomolar. And quick, tell me your blood pressure in preferred SI units, no tor allowed! Basically, what this all comes down to is that you should use the unit system which is most convenient for your job. In chemistry, there's a reason that eV are very convenient units of energy and I hope there's never some attojoule nazi who makes everyone switch. Normalize to use what's natural. You may talk of kJ vs. kcal, but I promise you, if you're doing heat transfer studies in a living animal, using kcal/kg, not kJ/kg, makes everything immediately transparent as the natural units to compare to the heat capacity of water, but using kJ just screws it all up again. The last paper I wrote this way, I put all the figures in with both units (it was for an Elsavier published journal), and then I just ignored the joules. As for spelling, there isn't even a "natural" answer. One should use what most of your audience is most familiar with, as using anything else detracts from the message. If most of the English speaking audience is distracted by caesium (which they are), you should write the other. SBHarris 05:20, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I first learned physical chemistry from Atkins' physical chemistry book, in kJ/mol. But once I moved into grad school, I found that most people in my field uses kcal/mol, whether they were American or not or the journals were American or not. I had to switch to kcal/mol, and sometimes have the impression that textbook authors like Atkins are too idealistic in jumping into the latest standards recommendation bandwagon when the standard has no use in the real world. Sometimes it is funny to look at old textbooks that used proposed standards that never caught on and barely anyone remembers. --Itub (talk) 09:21, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

text: It's in Table I of Nomenclature of Inorganic Chemistry (the "Red Book"), page 240. Physchim62 (talk) 17:17, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't have the 1990 edition handy (could you quote what it says?), but the 2005 edition (available online) only has a table of element names (Table I), with footnotes footnote stating that cesium and aluminum are also in common use. Something worth noting is that it doesn't say anything about sulphur, as only sulfur is to be found in their book. I would say the situation for S is different from that of Al and Cs: IUPAC clearly uses only one spelling for S, but it accepts that Cs and Al have two spellings in common use. It doesn't deprecate or explicitly recommend either of the spellings. My conclusion is that prescribing caesium and aluminium goes against the general rule at the top of the document that the most common name should be used (if cesium and aluminum are indeed more common), or at least against WP:ENGVAR which is the guideline for dealing with regional spelling variations. This is not to mention that, as this naming conventions page mentions, we already have exceptions for many substances where we prefer the common name to the IUPAC name. --Itub (talk) 09:12, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The table on p.240 of the 1990 version is essentially the same as that on p.248 of the 2005 version, but without the notes for caesium or aluminium. Note that the IUPAC table places "caesium" before calcium, and not "cesium" after cerium in it's "list of IUPAC-approved names in alphabetical order". As for WP:ENGVAR, aluminium, caesium and sulfur have always been at those names: the only distinction that these guidelines make from WP:ENGVAR is to standardise the spelling of the elements throughout chemistry articles (and not beyond). This wasn't a principle that these guidelines invented, it was merely codified here. If we didn't make this distinction, we would have conflicting spellings for at least six elements, and conflicting symbols for at least two more. The decision was not made by any of the current participants in this discussion. It is based on a clear IUPAC recommendation, which itself is based (at least in the three cases discussed here) on clear historical and etymological principles. There are those who don't like it, obviously, but there are plenty of people who object to Wikipedia's spelling sulfur with an "f" rather than a "ph"… In all of these cases, we go with the IUPAC-approved spellings. Physchim62 (talk) 11:17, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: First, regarding your statement, that "The decision was not made by any of the current participants in this discussion," this is not actually relevant. Consensus can change, and getting there first doesn't give you any ownership of the policy. See the wikipedia policy on Wikipedia:Consensus for more explanation. Before I comment on the substance of your point, I need to get ahold of the reference you're citing. Our lab's copy appears to have disappeared momentarily.--Cubic Hour (talk) 11:27, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that policies can't be changed, although (obviously) I don't think that this guideline should be. "Getting there first" actually does have some sense in the context of the other guidelines on the use of different forms of English. As for the reference, the IUPAC recommendations 2005 can be found online here, and the alphabetical list of elements is on page 248 of that edition (page 240 of the 1990 recommendations). My quote above comes from the "Elements" chapter; I shall try to remember to post the page number, unless someone else finds it first. I will update the refs in the guidelines once I've finished teaching this afternoon! Physchim62 (talk) 13:36, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Regarding ENGVAR, I don't mean that the articles about these two elements should be renamed (past discussion at the aluminium page is entertaining, though). I only suggest that we should follow the ENGVAR guideline for other articles. For example, if someone creates a new article on cesium phosphate, there is no justification for renaming it to caesium phosphate IMO. Or whenever someone mentions cesium in the context of atomic clocks, which I think is what started this new round of debate. --Itub (talk) 13:46, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I have been involved with the Chemicals WikiProject since 2004, and we even before that time a consensus had been reached to use the IUPAC names for these elements, and that's why these three even made it into Manual of Style discussions very early.  The reason was that we wanted to standardize on a set of spellings that would avoid endless discussions of this sort, which can eat up a lot of time.  The people writing the chemistry articles have been happy to work with that consensus, and I would hate to see such a well established consensus destroyed.  IUPAC names were chosen as the initial default, and this was codified even in quite early versions of the main MOS.  Sure, Google searches may show more cesium than caesium, but that we have normally based our naming policy on more than a simple Google search.  If we didn't, we'd switch nearly all of our articles over to the American form.  The example above of "Hydrogen-2" is a perfect one - it is clear that everyone calls it deuterium, so that's what we use on WP.  With caesium, most of the geographical world calls it caesium, most of the Google scholar world calls it cesium, so things are much more unclear, and that's where a IUPAC guideline becomes a godsend.  Of course, there will be exceptions to the IUPAC rules for articles outside chemistry such as this one, and I personally have little objection to the atomic clock article using the US spelling, but within chemistry we need to try and be consistent.  Walkerma (talk) 15:47, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: My main point of disagreement is that I'm not yet convinced that caesium is a "IUPAC standard". I see it as just another regional spelling variation. Or are we supposed to always say "colour indicator" and never "color indicator" because that is the way it was spelled in the IUPAC gold/orange book? WP:ENGVAR solves the problem well enough IMO. --Itub (talk) 15:55, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

text: As I've said, I think the case with sulfur may be different, because it is the only spelling found in the IUPAC book. As for the caesium category, I don't really mind. We have more than one spelling of flavor in :Category:Flavors and the world hasn't come to an end. --Itub (talk) 17:05, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with Itub. I read through the IUPAC citation, and it's definitely not a "standard." They simply chose one spelling to use as an editorial decision, instead of some cumbersome combined "caesium/cesium" usage. I concur that ENGVAR should simply be applied here. I'm not saying I favor cesium or aluminum over the other spelling, simply that neither one should not be dogmatically preferred/removed any more than a reference to a strangely "coloured" reaction product should be automatically edited into a strangely "colored" product.--Cubic Hour (talk) 17:17, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I can't see how this proposal would help anyone. Most articles would remain at their current spellings, but a few articles would change spelling for no apparent reason (other than the fact that they were originally written with North American spellings, or British spellings in the case of "sulphur"). Would that really make life easier for our users? Would they actually be able to find information more quickly? Physchim62 (talk) 15:40, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I fully support both Physchim62 and Walkerma. I would also suggest that the reason why only one spelling for "sulfur" is used is that the British chemical community rapidly accepted the IUPAC recommendation in spite of the completely general use of "sulphur" in the UK, while the American chemical community has never shown any willingness to accept recommendations for British spelling. --Bduke (talk) 22:31, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I think what you say about sulfur is true. But we are not here to "fix" the indiscretions of the Americans. --Itub (talk) 06:07, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

text: No, but we are not here to give in to "the indiscretions of the Americans" either, so we use the IUPAC preferred spelling. --Bduke (talk) 06:13, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Again though, it's not (as far as I can tell) an IUPAC standard. They just tend towards using one or the other in their publications. There is an important difference. If it's just an editorial decision on IUPAC's part, and not a real standard, ENGVAR should apply. -- And, as a separate note: let's bury the anti-American bias. It's just petty. I'm sorry if they changed your spellings, but life goes on, eh?--Cubic Hour (talk) 09:40, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Caesium v Cesium 

message: Working though the RSC ontology, I can see the need for some guidelines about the naming of these articles. I propose the following:
Physchim62 (talk) 15:05, 20 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Name reactions

message: Greek letters are spelled out, or displayed as characters. It seems rather messy - do we want to prefer either? It seems that titles do not support such characters, if I am not mistaken. --Rifleman 82 (talk) 18:28, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Titles can support such characters – 新加坡 is a valid article title, for example, although it redirects. Do we want to have a preference? Physchim62 (talk) 18:45, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Greek letters are certainly possible, although I haven't seen them used much in practice for titles of chemical articles. I've created many redirects using Greek letters, however. --Itub (talk) 23:51, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

text: For the talk page record, note that this was addressed with discussion at WikiProject Chemicals, leading to the present version of WP:CHEMPREFIX. Mdewman6 (talk) 01:27, 13 March 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Greek letters - characters or spelled out? 

message: "These international standard spellings should be used in all chemistry-related articles on English Wikipedia, even if they conflict with the other national spelling varieties used in the article." 
This has nothing to do with Naming conventions because naming conventions do not dictate the content of pages. This is a WP:MOS issue. -- PBS (talk) 12:39, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Use in the articles 

message: The guideline states, "For technical reasons, it is not recommended to use non-numerical prefixes in article titles", but I am not aware of any technical issues relating to the use of non-numerical prefixes.  Certainly there are many articles that violate this guideline.  It appears to be outdated and I suggest removing it.  Any objections?  -- Ed (Edgar181) 19:24, 2 May 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I have now updated this section accordingly.  -- Ed (Edgar181) 20:13, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I wonder about the other part.  Do we really want Il-1R–Associated kinase 4 deficiency which was recently moved on account of this?  I do sometimes see this, but it seems weird to me.  Most sources capitalize the L in "IL" instead of "Il".  Dicklyon (talk) 00:21, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think this guideline applies to that article because "Il-1R" isn't a chemical nomenclature prefix, but rather an abbreviation of "interleukin-1 receptor".  (I realize this is a very old comment I'm replying to, but doing so anyway...)  -- Ed (Edgar181) 18:09, 5 June 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Prefixes in titles 

message: Over the past several months there has been contentious debate over aspects of WP:Article Titles policy.  That contentiousness has led to efforts to improve the overall effectiveness of the policy and associated processes.  An RFC entitled: Wikipedia talk:Article titles/RFC-Article title decision practice has been initiated to assess the communities’ understanding of our title decision making policy.  As a project that has created or influenced subject specific naming conventions, participants in this project are encouraged to review and participate in the RFC.--Mike Cline (talk) 19:06, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  RFC – WP title decision practice 

message: I stumbled over the fact that 2C–H used an endash in its name while the rest of the 2C family, as well as all of the other related organics in the CSA schedules, and everything else I could find, used hyphens. I started a discussion on the talk page at Talk:2C–H#Page_move?, but we could use some more input please. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 18:46, 13 September 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: But it's a chemical bond, isn't it? The Oxford Dictionary of Scientific Terms uses en dashes throughout for bonds. Other authorities insist on this too. And I can't see where this page mandates a hyphen. Tony (talk)  06:26, 1 October 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Maybe it's not a chemical bond ... Tony (talk)  07:16, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

text: Definitely not a chemical bond. VQuakr (talk) 18:17, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

text: No, it's not a bond. It should be treated as a hyphen. --John (talk) 21:14, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  2C-H 

message: I want to note that WP:ELEMENTS there is a discussion going on on the naming and symbolizing of elements with no IUPAC name (now generally named like ununtrium). (An earlier part off the discussion is in archive, see the hatnote) -DePiep (talk) 09:28, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Un-named elements naming discussion 

message: In section Exceptions there is this line:
* phosphine not phosphane (and for substituted phosphines, arsine and stibine)
I cannot discern whether the three additions (phosphines, ...) are or are not acceptable. The writing is ambiguous. Please can someone rephrase that? -DePiep (talk) 20:02, 3 November 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Phosphine, arsine, stibine, and bismuthine are the more common names, although IUPAC would suggest phosphane, arsane, stibane, and bismuthane. I'll make this clearer. Double sharp (talk) 02:42, 31 August 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Phrasing 

message: Does anyone has any source which describes and clarifies capitalization of chemical names, which start with sec-, tert-, ortho-, meta-, para-, alpha-, beta-, D-, L-, (+)-, (-)-, (R)-, (S)- and the numerical prefixes? I need it very much for ru-wiki discussion. — Maksim Fomich (talk) 19:45, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sources on capitalization 

message: Despite what this page says, though, iron(II,III) oxide is an article and not a redirect to magnetite (which is another article altogether). Double sharp (talk) 02:59, 14 August 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: I moved :praseodymium (III,IV) oxide to :praseodymium(III,IV) oxide (reversed the redirect). DMacks (talk) 05:19, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fe<sub>3</sub>O<sub>4</sub> 

message: Currently, Wikipedia:Naming conventions (chemistry)#Use of Stock nomenclature states:
Stock nomenclature should not be used for compounds with mixed or non-integral oxidation numbers: hence  not  (in fact, this article is difficult to name and, as an exception, redirects to magnetite).
The section on stock nomenclature has existed since July 2005. However, one can see that there, in fact, does exist an article at Iron(II,III) oxide which is distinct from the Magnetite article and it was created in April 2008. So for 12 years, apparently no one (apart from Double sharp above) has noticed this discrepancy in the very example that the guideline is trying to use to illustrate what not to do, suggesting that the guideline is not being enforced in practice. So what do we do here? I see several possibilities:
# Stock nomenclature #5 does not represent current community consensus, and should be struck or modified.
# Iron(II,III) oxide should be moved to Triiron tetraoxide to comply with the guideline.
# Iron(II,III) oxide should be merged into Magnetite to comply with the guideline.
I don't have a strong view but the current situation is rather risible. King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 23:57, 21 April 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: I moved :praseodymium (III,IV) oxide to :praseodymium(III,IV) oxide (reversed the redirect). DMacks (talk) 05:19, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Stock nomenclature for mixed oxidation numbers 

message: For the record, the previous section "IUPAC name vs. systematic name" has been replaced with the current section per discussion at WikiProject Chemicals. Mdewman6 (talk) 01:22, 13 March 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: Note that this discussion has been reopened at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Chemicals#Revising_guidance_of_naming_of_articles_for_organic_compounds. Mdewman6 (talk) 00:43, 15 March 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Update to organic chemistry naming guidance 

message: There is a discussion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Chemistry#Updating_naming_conventions_for_groups regarding possible revisions to Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(chemistry)#Groups_of_compounds. Mdewman6 (talk) 01:47, 12 April 2022 (UTC)
thread_title: Discussion about groups naming convention

message: We're using at least two conventions to name compounds.  For example, Special:Search/intitle:tetrachloride shows a roughly equal mix of "Element tetrachloride" articles and redirects to "Element(IV) chloride".  Is this a correct consequence of WP:COMMONNAME, or is there some technical difference between the bonds (I'm no chemist), or would the titles benefit from some page moves? Certes (talk) 11:21, 27 January 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Honestly, the "rule" that Stock nomenclature is only for ionic compounds is not really followed that much by chemists. HgCl2 is a perfect example. I don't have a strong opinion on which title is better in most cases and would prefer to follow WP:COMMONNAME. Double sharp (talk) 22:20, 24 May 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Compound naming 

message: Following the RM of Pyrylium from Pyrylium salt, I have decided to add a new point about names of ions, but don't know where to place it.
 –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 10:18, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ions