“f” off!
Posted in Chemistry, Linguistic Annoyances at 19:00 on 10 December 2009
For some time now The Royal Society of Chemistry, which is obviously a British organisation, has recommended the use of sulfur as the spelling for sulphur. (This has the knock on effect of also meaning using the forms sulfate and sulfite for naming compounds containing respectively the sulphate and sulphite ions; or hydrogensulfite and hydrogensulfate for what before more systematic naming came about used to be known as the bisulphite and bisulphate ions.)
I have now learned that the SQA, the Scottish Qualifications Authority, (my italics) – again domiciled within these islands – will also be taking up this egregious practice.
The imposition is of course an American usage and is I suppose being introduced on the grounds that sulphur is easier to spell this way. But is it?
I agree that Americans – and increasingly we Brits – do write fantasy for phantasy but on this side of the Atlantic we do still tend to cling on to phantasm rather than fantasm.
Yet do Americans write of fotografs or fotons? They seem to manage those all right while using ph.
What is so special about sulphur that singles it out for this treatment?
And why not go the whole hog, here, and spell it sulfer to make it more like it sounds?
I do admit some people confuse it with silver – though since silver is a greyish metal and sulphur a yellow non-metal I canât for the life of me see why. I think the ânewâ spelling will only make such confusion worse, though.
But whatever next?
Will we be forced to adopt aluminum?
Can we perhaps look forward to spelling the main ingredient of carbolic soap as fenol? Or the acid-alkali indicator as fenolfthalein?
Will element number 15 be known in the future as fosforus? (No, of course not. Its symbol is P and it only ever gets confused with potassium – which for historical reasons has the symbol K. F is in any case already taken as the symbol for fluorine.)
Itâs all nonsense. Stop it.
Now.
I for one will not be changing my spelling practices.
Accept no substitute. Stand up for ph.
Jon
11 December 2009 at 09:14
Hi Jack,
Felt moved to respond, as a defender of language and a chemist.
The RSC adopted the spelling sulfur in 1992, two years after the International Union of Pure & Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) did. Without getting too Mark Twain here, simplification of spelling should always be a good thing, right? Especially in such an international context as names of elements. We’re not there yet – tungsten is still called wolfram in Germany (hence W as its symbol) but communicating science through language barriers is really important, so the simpler we make it, the better we can do it.
The SQA may have adopted it recently but the QCA did in 2000.
And on the subject of alumin(i)um, when Humphry Davy used his brand new electrolysis technique in 1808 to extract the metal atoms from a mineral known as alumina, he named his newly-discovered element alumium. When he finally published his work he’d settled on aluminum, singularising the seemingly plural “alumina” as one might. The scientific community objected, perhaps rightly, saying aluminum as an element name didn’t fit with the other classically-derived element names ending “ium”.
We can ask IUPAC to change platinum to platinium, tantalum to tantalium, etc. if you wish – these are again derived from platina and tantala.
Swinging back to ph phor a minute, I think phenol and its kin are safe as it starts with a ph rather than engulphing one. Many chemicals, especially polymers and larger molecules, are shortened to an initialisation or acronym; PPS (polyphenylenesulfide, in IUPAC nomenclature) is an example.
F’in sulfur is the standard in America, but also in British Latin dictionaries from the medieval period.
Just thought you’d like the chemists’ perspective on this. Incidentally the chemical science community is still divided on this issue – many academics resist spelling sulfur with an f (just as they insist on hyphenating and capitalising “E-mail” 😉 ).
In the end, I think no-one (chemists and non-chemists alike) will mind how the general public spells sulfur. But in terms of worldwide cohesion of scientific literature, it’s best if we chemists all stick with the same spelling.
best wishes
Jon Edwards
Royal Society of Chemistry
jackdeighton
11 December 2009 at 20:14
Thanks for commenting, Jon.
I like to think of myself as a defender of language and I have a PhD in Chemistry! So I do have a chemist’s perspective on this. It was while wearing both of those hats that I made the post.
“simplification of spelling should always be a good thing, right?”
I can’t agree. We would lose too many distinctions and connections that are valuable. To take one example: to spell bomb (I use the word here in its non-chemical sense) as bom would then lead to the word bombardment not having the same reinforcement of meaning but instead having a confusing introduction of a b apparently for no good reason. (And, incidentally, also to bombing having to be spelt bomming.)
Would you go for led as the spelling of element no. 82? Or for the centre of pencils? (Not that they contain any Pb, anyway.) Or metre always spelled as meter so that the difference between an instrument for measuring something and a unit of length is elided?
As far as Wolfram is concerned it is actually old English as well as German so W ought to be unproblematic as its symbol even for English speakers.
As indeed should the symbols Na and K: not to mention Au, Ag, Sn, Pb, Cu, Hg, Sb – all time honoured from the origins of Chemistry arising out of Alchemy. I always make a point of stressing their ancient derivations when introducing pupils to these symbols and the Periodic Table, so that they do not simply appear to come out of the blue.
“singularising the seemingly plural âaluminaâ”
Well, since alumina wasn’t a plural, that was a supremely illiterate thing to do. Alumium would have been fine.
Platinum and tantalum have been the accepted spellings for those elements for a long time. There is no need to change them. To do so would in fact lead to confusion.
“I think phenol and its kin are safe as it starts with a ph rather than engulphing one.”
To turn your joke back on you. What the ph!
What does it matter whereabouts in the word the ph is? By that logic we ought to go for phosforus as the spelling for P.
“Fâin sulfur is the standard in America”
To paraphrase the old joke, there’s no f’in sulphur. (That was the point of the post.)
“in terms of worldwide cohesion of scientific literature, itâs best if we chemists all stick with the same spelling”
I believe the Germans still use J as the symbol for iodine and see no reason to stop them doing it. I am quite happy for Americans to use their spellings. I just don’t see why we have to. (See my review on the book I am reading currently, once I post it.)
Sulphur Again – A Son of the Rock -- Jack Deighton
5 February 2010 at 23:03
[…] I do hope Jon Edwards from the RSC has looked at it (and at my reply to his comment on my take on the subject here.) […]