Abstract
DR. A. R. RICHARDS1 proposes a form of 'chemical shorthand' to designate the commoner hydrocarbons and their simple compounds. This he claims may avoid the practice of coining names such as 'triptane' for '2,3,3-trimethylbutane'; in practice it will not have this effect. Once a substance leaves the laboratory and enters the plant, it must have a short distinctive title by which all and sundry can refer to it; and in 'triptane' such a word has been found. What we must most sedulously avoid is the unwarrantable intrusion of such coined names into systematic nomenclature. G. C. Foster, so far back as 18652, pointed out that all sciences have two distinct requirements of nomenclature—a convenient general language and a systematic or 'legal' language. The former serves for the ordinary everyday transactions of science and manufacture and will, "in the main, take care of itself; and at any given period it usually contains a large admixture of terms—once technical, but now no longer used for purposes of accuracy—which, like fossils in a rock, tell of the successive changes by which the existing state of things has been brought about". The strictly legal or premeditated language of organic chemistry is for cataloguing and identifying substances with absolute precision and expedition.
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References
Nature, 153, 715 (1944).
Phil. Mag., 29 (April 1865).
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DYSON, G. A Notation for Organic Compounds. Nature 154, 114 (1944). https://doi.org/10.1038/154114a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/154114a0
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