Introduction

These guidelines are offered by the Interdivisional Committee on Terminology, Nomenclature and Symbols (ICTNS) to those writing or planning to write documents for publication by IUPAC. ICTNS has the task of ensuring that the contents of new recommendations concerned with nomenclature, symbols, or definitions of terms are consistent with previous such publications of the Union. Also, ICTNS scrutinizes IUPAC technical reports of a more specialized nature for consistency of nomenclature and symbols usage. Attention by authors to such matters at an early stage of writing (or even planning) a document will speed substantially the acceptance procedures for publication that ICTNS carries out on behalf of the Union. Nothing is more annoying for the authors of a document, who have worked hard to reach technical agreement on the contents with their colleagues, than to be asked subsequently to make multiple changes for consistency within IUPAC.

The situation with respect to ensuring consistency with earlier IUPAC pronouncements has been much facilitated by the publication of three reference works of general importance, namely the Compendium of Chemical Terminology [the ‘Gold Book’; ref. 1], Principles of Chemical Nomenclature - A Guide to IUPAC Recommendations [ref. 2], and Quantities, Units, and Symbols in Physical Chemistry [the ‘Green Book’; ref. 3], to be discussed below.

In addition, authors of documents are advised strongly to send their first full, or even partial, draft to their Division representative on ICTNS, whose names are listed in the IUPAC Handbook, for advice on whether or not they are adequately adhering to ICTNS–IUPAC requirements. The Division representatives are asked to respond speedily, with only general and helpful comments, and not to scrutinize the document in a detailed manner at this stage. A full scrutiny will later be carried out by ICTNS members on completed documents intended as Recommendations. Technical Reports, which should not contain new material on symbols, nomenclature, or definitions, are checked by the Officers of ICTNS before submission for publication in Pure and Applied Chemistry.

Authors should indicate on the title page whether their manuscript is intended to be a Recommendation or a Technical Report; their decision on this matter will be subject to approval by the officers of ICTNS. Time and effort will usually be saved if this ICTNS scrutiny is carried out before the preparation of the final manuscript. In particular, the title of each document should be informative to reflect well the contents of the document and to permit its future retrieval from relevant databases and indices through carefully chosen terms. If the author is not a native English speaker, then it will frequently be profitable to consult an English speaker for use of idioms, etc., before submission to ICTNS via the Division President and the IUPAC Secretariat.