Open main menu
Home
Random
Recent changes
Special pages
Community portal
Preferences
About Wikipedia
Disclaimers
Incubator escapee wiki
Search
User menu
Talk
Dark mode
Contributions
Create account
Log in
Editing
Camel case
(section)
Warning:
You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you
log in
or
create an account
, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.
Anti-spam check. Do
not
fill this in!
=== Chemical formulas === The first systematic and widespread use of medial capitals for technical purposes was the notation for chemical formulas invented by the Swedish chemist [[Jöns Jakob Berzelius|Jacob Berzelius]] in 1813. To replace the multitude of naming and symbol conventions used by chemists until that time, he proposed to indicate each chemical element by a symbol of one or two letters, the first one being capitalized. The capitalization allowed formulas like "[[sodium chloride|NaCl]]" to be written without spaces and still be parsed without ambiguity.<ref>[[Jöns Jacob Berzelius]] (1813). ''Essay on the Cause of Chemical Proportions and on Some Circumstances Relating to Them: Together with a Short and Easy Method of Expressing Them''. ''[[Annals of Philosophy]]'' 2, 443-454, 3, 51-52; (1814) 93-106, 244-255, 353-364.</ref><ref>[[Henry M. Leicester]] & Herbert S. Klickstein, eds. 1952, ''A Source Book in Chemistry, 1400-1900'' (Cambridge, MA: Harvard)</ref> Berzelius' system continues to be used, augmented with three-letter symbols such as "[[ununennium|Uue]]" for unconfirmed or unknown elements and abbreviations for some common substituents (especially in the field of organic chemistry, for instance "[[Ethyl group|Et]]" for "ethyl-"). This has been further extended to describe the [[amino acid]] sequences of [[protein]]s and other similar domains.
Edit summary
(Briefly describe your changes)
By publishing changes, you agree to the
Terms of Use
, and you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the
CC BY-SA 4.0 License
and the
GFDL
. You agree that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient attribution under the Creative Commons license.
Cancel
Editing help
(opens in new window)