“Hey, Harry, Julian English killed himself last night.”
“What?”
“He killed himself. He took some kind of poison in the garage. Carbon oxide.”
“You mean carbon monoxide.”
“That’s it. It’s a poison.”
“It certainly is, but he didn’t take it. It comes from the engine.”
“Oh, really? I didn’t know that. All I know is that it was a poison and that he took it in the garage.”
The IUPAC (International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry)—something like the FIFA of chemists—is very particular, very fussy, about the way chemical compounds are written and named. It passes that rigor on to teachers, and rightly so, because small changes in the formula of a compound—and therefore in its name—can be crucial to its properties and behavior.
The young woman reporting the suicide adopts a charmingly modest and detached attitude toward the names of poisons: “some kind of poison.” She does not distinguish between carbon oxide (CO₂) and carbon monoxide (CO). It does not matter much in the context of the conversation, but in the real world they should never be confused.
