Talk:Thioglycolate broth

Why does this article spell it as thioglycolate with one L? Every other reference I see has two L's as thioglycollate. I've changed the article to reflect this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by SubtleGuest (talk • contribs) 17:07, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Let me try to explain why I changed it back. The word is spelled both ways rather frequently. The active ingredient is sodium thioglycolate, a salt of thioglycolic acid, which has one L because it is etymologically derived from glycol, where the -ol is a standard sufix for the -OH group, so that sodium thioglycolate is the sodium salt of the acid one gets by replacing the -OH in glycolic acid by an -SH. There is little ambiguity in the chemical literature, but in bacteriology, the two double l spelling appears more frequently, probably by analogy to common words like collagen or collage, which derive from the Greek kolla meaning glue. A Google search indicates that the phrase "thioglycollate broth" appears about twice as often as "thioglycolate broth", whereas "sodium thioglycollate" appears half as often as "sodium thioglycolate". So we have what a prescriptivist would call a misspelling, and what a descriptivist would call two alternate spellings. While I favor the descriptivist approach to language in general, as a chemist, I favor a more prescriptivist approach when speaking of things that are named after a specific chemical. That said, it's a close call.CharlesHBennett (talk) 12:35, 7 July 2015 (UTC)