Element symbol

In relation to the chemical elements, a symbol is a code for a chemical element. Many functional groups has their own chemical symbol, e.g. Ph for the phenyl group, and Me for the methyl group. Chemical symbols for elements normally consist of one or two letters from the Latin alphabet, but can contain three when the element has a systematic temporary name (as of March 2017, no discovered elements have such a name), and are written with the first letter capitalized.

Earlier chemical element symbols stem from classical Latin and Greek vocabulary. For some elements, this is because the material was known in ancient times, while for others, the name is a more recent invention. For example, "He" is the symbol for helium (New Latin name, not known in ancient Roman times), "Pb" for lead (plumbum in Latin), and "Hg" for mercury (hydrargyrum in Greek). Some symbols come from other sources, like "W" for tungsten (Wolfram in German, not known in Roman times).

Temporary symbols assigned to newly or not-yet synthesized elements use 3-letter symbols based on their atomic numbers. For example, "Uno" was the temporary symbol for hassium (element 108) which had the temporary name of unniloctium.

Chemical symbols may be modified by the use of prepended superscripts or subscripts to specify a particular isotope of an atom. Additionally, appended superscripts may be used to indicate the ionization or oxidation state of an element. They are widely used in chemistry and they have been officially chosen by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry. There are also some historical symbols that are no longer officially used.

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