Talk:Chemical symbol

Natural Science
Which element is a non metal in group 1 41.145.192.27 (talk) 22:52, 7 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Hydrogen. Double sharp (talk) 14:08, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

When to use chemical symbols and when *not* to.
The article seems not to contain any guidelines for when to write say "triuranium octoxide" vs "U3O8" with the numbers as subscripts, of course. Mentioning "U3O8" is also very different from using it. Likewise, when should one write, if ever, "triuranium-235 octoxide" rather than using a chemical formula including a nuclide symbol? Readers need to know this, especially if they are editing Wikipedia.

I just posted a long comment about a similar issue about nuclide symbols, so for more info that more or less applies also to my question here, please have a look at that. Here's the link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Nuclear_weapon_design#235U_versus_uranium-235. Polar Apposite (talk) 17:17, 18 August 2023 (UTC)


 * For "triuranium octoxide", if you want to specify the isotope as uranium-235, you can write $235$U$3$O$8$. In this case, superscripting and subscripting is highly desirable, to clearly distinguish between mass number (superscript) and multiplicity of an element (subscript). Said element-plus-mass-number notation can of course be used whenever you want to specify the isotope of an element in a compound. In fact, IUPAC recommends that deuterium should be denoted $2$H (again, same notation) rather than D, to prevent problems in sorting chemical formulae (see the article "Deuterium"). Same recommendation applies, of course, for tritium. Solomonfromfinland (talk) 12:13, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

Atomic symbol
Why is there no mention of the fact that IUPAC, the official arbiter of chemical terminology, uses the term atomic symbol rather than "chemical symbol" or "element symbol"? See https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/A00503. Samer (talk) 02:29, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

Systematic
In the section on obsolete symbols: to reduce clutter, i moved the systematic chemical symbols into a new subsection, “Systematic chemical symbols”. Okay? Should the title of said new section be shortened to “Systematic symbols”? I added, “When elements beyond oganesson (starting with ununennium, Uue, element 119), are discovered; their systematic name and symbol will presumably be superseded by a trivial name and symbol.” Should a source be cited for said factoid? If so, perhaps a source could be found among the sources cited by the article “Ununennium”?

Also, in the list of symbols no longer in use, i was thinking of also separating out the symbols for Mendeleev's predicted elements, into another separate subsection, or at least a separate list. Should i do that? Solomonfromfinland (talk) 04:22, 10 April 2024 (UTC)


 * I'd say no, because that would break the alphabetical ordering of the list. That doesn't matter so much with the systematic symbols, because those are all 3 letters and so easier to identify. — kwami (talk) 21:45, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

Element symbols that are words
Element symbols that are English words: He, Be, As, In, I, At, Am, No;

Element symbols that are French words: Ne, Si, Ni, As, Se, Y, Te, La, Ce, Eu, Ta, Os, Au, Es. 129.104.241.242 (talk) 04:08, 23 May 2024 (UTC)