Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Chemistry/Compound classes

Inorganic examples
Looking at a few examples of existing articles re inorganics and OMs

Ions - We have a lot of articles e.g. sulfate, chloride as examples of generic articles on ions.

Salt sound alikes - We have some on ionic / covalent groups e.g. hydride, boride,carbide,nitride, sulfide where there is sometimes no common func. group just a common naming. The articles are generally trend articles focusing e.g. on structure and implications for properties.


 * The ions could be termed functional groups but entering each one would add too much to the info box and overload it with trivia. Ions could definitely have an info box which related principally to the "free ion". We should have something in the infobox to cater for ligands e.g. a line "ligand coordination modes".


 * The compound classes like carbide - all that is really common here is the name that that they are binary compounds. Traditionally inorganic chemists teach/write about trends in these, so they need to be in wiki. These are IMO compound classes and not   functional groups - an infobox would not be much use and might even confuse..(unless we can come up with one that still looks good and  can handle different structures / bonding etc!!)

We have other articles on e.g. metallocene where again these are classes and not functional groups- and agin I cannot see an infobox helping with these.

In conclusion--I like the guidelines. I would however make the infobox optional-- with words to indicate that it should be used where there is a common functional/structural entity - which would generally mean with inorganics,  yes to an ion e.g. sulfate, but no to an infobox for a class e.g. boride. --Axiosaurus (talk) 18:45, 19 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I support the idea of a chembox for ions that have a definite composition. Many of these have identifiers in databases. So for example sulfate should have a box. But a separate article about sulfates in general would not warrant a box as there is no single thing for it to describe. Functional groups may have ChEBI ids, but may not warrant a chembox. However a separate article on a radical deserves a chembox. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 03:31, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

preparation and synthesis
Comments: V8rik (talk) 17:16, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
 * what is proposed preparation is called synthesis in most current articles. There is no reason this have this changed.
 * duplication of content that already exists in the chemical reactions article should be avoided. Description should be as brief as possible without specific examples. Full overview in a table
 * organization by importance of chemical reaction is a good idea, but based on what criteria?

I'm guessing there was an error where a whole paragraph was duplicated under "reactions"; it doesn't make sense anyway. "Reactions" discusses what you can do with members of this class. --Rifleman 82 (talk) 18:28, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Article titles in plural form
I don't understand, why articles on compound classes are not named in the plural form. I know WP:SINGULAR, but I think it would make things more clearly and allows distinguishing a compound and a compound class named after it. Disilene for example is a chemical compounds, while disilenes is a compound class. Or benzamide is a chemical compounds, while benzamides is a compound class. --Leyo 11:00, 24 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I think there was a more recent discussion on the topic, but where is that? My use of plurals has been a bit random, but perhaps some need to be renamed. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 08:17, 8 July 2024 (UTC)