I have recently re-subscribed to Chemistry World after several months of refusing to accept the publication. My refusal had been as a protest against the Americanised spelling of sulphur that has become prevalent in the magazine, (with the notable exception of at least one advertisement that, we can assume, was allowed to use the British English spelling because the magazine respected the standards and intentions of the advertisers and the advert brought revenue into the magazine). My re-subscription began because I may be looking for work after July when I am being made redundant, so I needed access to the Jobs section. I will not be reading the articles, having regard for my health, particularly blood pressure.
I was dismayed to read that the RSC Nomenclature Committee in 1992 approved the American spelling, "sulfur". Regardless of its original spelling in Latin, sulphur had become the accepted spelling of the element in Britain and some other English-speaking nations such as Australia. By this I mean that sulphur was the spelling to be expected when reading a British English publication in those countries. This expectation appears to have been trampled by the aforementioned Committee without (as far as I know) any of the likely readers of such publications (including Chemistry World) having been consulted or asked to place a vote on the decision. This is clearly undemocratic. Readers’ expectations were violated, and readers responded quickly in anger on the Letters page of CW, the most succinct being "Sulfur! Fosforus?". More letters appeared, even as recently as last year, soon after the new editor, Bibiana Campos-Seijo took over. She replied to the protestor’s letter somewhat smugly, saying that since the IUPAC had approved the American spelling, this was the one the magazine was going to use. This response was in clear disregard for the wishes of the RSC membership, who are (in my opinion) a crowd that does not readily protest, thus making the small number of protests received by the editor the very small tip of a very big iceberg. I have no doubt that the majority of CW readers do not want to see their magazine using American spellings and are in silent fury at having to do so.
The decision of the IUPAC is without merit. They have no jurisdiction over the language (including the spelling) that any Nation State wishes to use on its home ground (or internationally), and that must include the Names (including the spelling) that the people of that State have used to identify these substances. For example, in Italy the name for sulphur is zolfo and in Greek is . The error that the IUPAC have made is that they think there is only one form of English, and that somehow the English spellings in the two countries of the USA and the UK must be made the same for chemical names, in case there is some kind of confusion (over what substance we are talking about, we assume). There are, clearly, more than two forms of English which (largely) share a common grammatical structure, and it is the names for things that largely differentiate between the different forms of English. Anyone who believes that an intelligent (i.e. chemistry-taught) person could be confused between sulphur and sulfur is barking mad. (Or at least, I would not place myself in the care of such a person or place my trust in their judgement.)
The IUPAC was set up to (we assume) standardise the systematic names for, principally, organic compounds, where the order, prefixes, numbering and parenthesis are critical for describing the substance unambiguously, so that it cannot be confused with another, similar, structure with quite different properties. All well and good. But, like many people with an important job to do, they go too far. We now have "Propanone" on bottles instead of "Acetone", and "Propan-2-ol" instead of isopropyl alcohol or isopropanol. [There is only one iso C3 alcohol that is not a cyclo compound (and named as such), so what is the point of splitting the name into an unwieldy sequence of syllables and numbers?] What is that all about, why change such names into something else? This is not progress, this is re-naming for the sake of it. We as chemists know the formula to these old names, and for anyone else who might not know them (a non-chemist), it is "hands off", because we as chemists uniquely know the hazards and can take steps to handle them safely. There is no mandate for everyone speaking the same language and using the same names for things; we should learn other languages where appropriate. Whatever standards are in place, even in English, the common useage will soon be complemented by some new name that someone invents and his or her friends adopt, and that subset of society who identify with the originators will begin to use that name if they prefer it. New names do not become standard, because there is no standard. English is a bastard language anyway, with sources all over the world, and the point of using one spelling (or useage) over another is that it expresses something extra. It seems to me only right and proper that research carried out in this country should use the traditional spellings of this country: it is a means of placing one’s mark on the work, and also as a clue to the country of origin. I guess that the IUPAC wanted to place its "mark" on chemical society by introducing this "f" spelling of sulphur; well, they have no right to any such thing, and they have no country to represent unless you accept the increasingly unworkable concept of "Europe". (At the same time, Americans should use the "Aluminum" spelling for the same reasons.)
These grey faceless people are threatening to take over, where all cultural diversity is to be discouraged to the bland uniformity of some "standard" based on what some beaurocrat decides is best. Personally, I have always loved Diversity, of both culture and substance,which I am sure is what attracted me to chemistry in the first place. We embrace (or so I thought until recently) the huge diversity of materials in nature, whereas physicists seem to sneer at it, always trying to remove troublesome diversity by attempting to obtain a Theory of Everything, where all of our wonderful universe can be explained in one equation. It has been said that "Anything that can be put into a nutshell should stay there." Famous physicists have come up with some telling statements like (and I copy from Wikipedia):
Developing classification schemes for hadrons became a burning question after new experimental techniques uncovered so many of them that it became clear that they could not all be elementary. These discoveries led Wolfgang Pauli to exclaim "Had I foreseen that, I would have gone into botany," and Enrico Fermi to advise his student Leon Lederman: "Young man, if I could remember the names of these particles, I would have been a botanist."
Botanists embrace such diversity, but maybe chemists, envious of physicists’ status as popularisers of science and discoverers of fundamental truths, and of their public budgets (cf the Large Hadron Collider), would like to place themselves / ourselves as far away from botanists as possible and as close to physicists as possible, hoping to bask in their reflected glory perhaps?
The IUPAC is guilty of snobbery, poo-pooing such names as the wonderfully poetic "Muriatic Acid" or "Salts of Sorrel". What on earth is wrong with a few extra names? Even before the internet, if a student of chemistry came across these names, he or she could have enjoyed an informative diversion by looking them up in a library book. Moreover, these old names carry extra information that point towards new knowledge. Look for example at salts of sorrel, potassium oxalate: the name indicates a natural source. That type of "link" (a pre-computer type of hyperlink) can point a student to some interesting reading where much more than the original subject can be learned, thus broadening the mind. Or is the acquisition of an expansive awareness to be discouraged these days?
I got this feeling at my RSC interview for my current grade of Member. When I mentioned that I was studying Paul Karrer’s wonderful book on Organic Chemistry, one of my interviewers said something like, "There are more modern works, you know", as if to say that there was something not quite proper about works that embrace diversity. Or that modern works were better, presumably in terms of some orbital theory (physics again), or information more likely to please a modern examiner, who might consider his neck exposed if he expresses anything like love for the subject and not a mute adherence to the doctrines of modernity. Don’t get me wrong, the Schrodinger equation is beautiful, but for a Physical Chemistry lecturer in 1968 to tell a class of students including a 19 year old (me) in 1968, that they had to learn how to derive the equation, was totally ridiculous. (He could have been better advised to demonstrate the rapid rearrangement of electron orbitals by just popping some soap bubbles. Okay, the shapes are different but the principles are similar.) I wanted to learn chemistry, not Applied Mathematics. I dropped the Higher National Certificate course, decided to teach myself chemistry, and was lucky enough to be able to do so working for J.A. Radley Laboratories and others up to the present day. I have been successful in obtaining MRSC and CCHEM precisely because of my love for the subject and my constant reading of it, and this is the only subject where I can beat the University Challenge contestants for speed to the answers, and often the answer itself. From my experience of working with chemistry graduates in several establishments, their love of the subject does not exactly shine out, and it is real shame for this country of Britain. The resources are out there, and the resources are the appropriate knowledge, and no amount of studying the Schrodinger equation will ever result in anything new being created (other than by physicists, and only then with a big computer and lots of time to wait). Okay, I’ve drifted away from my main topic, but the Joy of Chemistry is about diversity, not simpification, and we should embrace a diverse nomenclature too.
I hope that publishing this discussion in a forum lets the affected members know that they are not alone, and adds to our justification for choosing our original spelling. If they can do so without endangering their positions, the affected members could add their voice to this forum. Where there is fear about protesting, I have this re-assurance:
It is not a law of the country of the United Kingdom to write "sulphur" with an "f", nor is it a crime to correct mis-spellings, and now that we have the "Find & Replace" function in our wordprocessors, we have a rich field of text to download, correct and upload, much as an editor on Wikipedia might do. I am not saying, correct every "sulfur" mis-spelling, because Americans have the right to use their own spelling in their own work, where the spelling can then give information to the reader about the origin of such work. But all useages of the "f" spelling within our nation of the United Kingdom should be corrected back to the original spelling "sulphur". We have sat timidly for too long, or shrugged our shoulders, and I am no exception. When this "f" edict was issued, I could have contacted the newspapers and been photographed burning a copy of Webster’s Dictionary outside the RSC’s offices, but I was soporific and woke up late to the danger. But never "too late": what is right now is right tomorrow and was right in 1990 when the IUPAC made their mistake.
In summary, for the reasons outlined above, I suggest the membership would welcome the following events taking place:
- The RSC Nomenclature Committee will rescind its approval of the "sulfur" spelling of sulphur for texts originating in the UK
- The RSC NC will contact the IUPAC to express their concern about unnecessary interference in the culture of these islands.
- The IUPAC will accept that different countries, whether they speak a language called "English" or not, have the right to their own names for all elements in their respective languages, to include variations within languages that appear to be similar or having the same language title
- The IUPAC, in accordance with the principles I have outlined in this document, will rescind its decision to approve any particular spelling for sulphur, aluminium and certain other elements such as caesium
- Teaching establishments will encourage British students to use British spellings, while examination boards will widen the syllabus for 16-18 year olds.
I hope that in this text I have not ranted nor appeared impertinent, although there must be many chemist members who regard the Society as little short of God and would shrivel at the idea of defending their culture against so august a body. But I am trying to see the changes in chemical society the way our royal family might view them, taking a long-term view of the culture of these islands, and I am fairly certain that Her Majesty would not be in favour of the Americanisation of our language, even when used in a somewhat closeted professional body. I would have thought that sheer respect for the older members would have been enough to maintain a proper British English style in the magazine, but with the current editor, that is not the case. She admits to having received several letters on this subject from members, and this is certainly the tip of a huge iceberg. If the Nomenclature Committee wish to know the preferences of the membership, I respectfully suggest that they ask us to vote on the issue! But at the same time, to remind us that we are British, definitely not American, and should take the opportunity to make a statement to that effect.
