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Why are elements given a symbol?

Updated: 8/10/2023
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āˆ™ 9y ago

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Different languages have their own words for elements, but chemical symbols are international, so they provide a universal way of specifying chemicals. A chemical formula is not specific to any language and will make the same sense in any country. Also, many molecules and formulae involve a large number of different elements, or complex arrangements of the same elements, and symbols provide a way to express them without being too long.

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āˆ™ 16y ago
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āˆ™ 14y ago

The same reason anything else uses symbols: to represent information in a condensed form.

Element symbols take up much less space than the full name of the element, and so can be written in a large font to make them easy to see at a glance. The full name is generally written in a much smaller font.

Also, many tables have symbols that represent the crystal form of the solid phase of the element, or the common oxidation states of the element, or the phase of the element at room temperature, or some other information the designer of the chart felt was relevant.

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āˆ™ 15y ago

Elements have symbols so that we don't have to write their complete names again and again. They can be easily represented by a single letter. Besides, it is more convenient to use in molecular formulae.

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āˆ™ 13y ago

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Symbols are used to represent elements, because it helps you

recognize what the elements are just by seeing the symbol.

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āˆ™ 11y ago

symbol is a short form of an element for convenience

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āˆ™ 9y ago

To shorten it so that you don't have to write out technetium when you could just write Tc.

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