User talk:Disneian

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Sulphate / Sulfate
Hi Disneian, and welcome to Wikipedia.

The local standard for these is the "sulfate" spelling, not the "sulphate".

You might find a read of WP:ENGVAR relevant here. The general rules for language variations in articles are:
 * Is the language variation specific to the subject, i.e. "Trooping the color" would be as wrong as "What colour is the White House?"
 * Is there a wiki project standard?
 * Is there an industry or external standard?
 * Is there any virtue in imposing consistency on Wikipedia? Bear in mind that consistency has some objective virtue, but the question of which one to choose is subjective and is always going to be the "wrong" choice for some of the readership.
 * What language did the article start out with, and stay with that.

For chemistry, the standard is "sulfate" (I must add, I'm not a chemist). AIUI, this is now the international standard amongst chemists (it was still sulphates what I learned school chemistry in the UK). If you look at the Chemistry wikiproject, there will be more detail on this. Andy Dingley (talk) 12:20, 18 December 2009 (UTC)