Chemical element notation

Last revised by Dr Daniel J Bell ◉ on 23 Dec 2019

Citation, DOI & article data

Citation:

Bell, D. Chemical element notation. Reference article, Radiopaedia.org. (accessed on 24 May 2022) https://doi.org/10.53347/rID-68259

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.53347/rID-68259

Permalink:

https://radiopaedia.org/articles/68259

rID:

68259

Article created:

21 May 2019 by Dr Daniel J Bell ◉

Revisions:

7 times by 1 users - see full revision history

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Pathology

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Elements (notation)

The notation of the 118 known chemical elements is prescribed by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) ¹.

Each chemical element has a long name and a symbol. In English the long name is only capitalized as part of title or sentence case. Chemical element names are not proper nouns and therefore are otherwise always in lowercase.

Symbols are either one or two letters (e.g. F, Xe, U etc.):

the initial letter is always capitalized
if there is a second letter it is always in lowercase

Correct usages:

Carbon's atomic number is 6 which means it has 6 protons in each of its atoms.
The fluorine atom used in PET imaging is a radioisotope with a mass number of 18.