M E M O R A N D U M

TO:     Executive Board of the Division of Polymer Chemistry (POLY)

FROM: W. V. Metanomski

SUBJECT: Nomenclature Committee's Report 

DATE: 23 August 1998

The Committee continues to promote polymer-nomenclature recommendations, 
in particular, those of the IUPAC Commission on Macromolecular 
Nomenclature. The Committee monitors how the macromolecular nomenclature 
matters are explained and discussed in various textbooks and handbooks, 
and offers suggestions for improvements. Individual questions from POLY 
members and requests to help naming polymers are answered promptly.

Ted Wilks published in the August 1998 issue of POLYMER PREPRINTS the 
"Macromolecular Nomenclature Note No. 15" on "Nomenclature and Structure 
Representation for Dendritic Polymers". This subject is being now 
considered by the IUPAC Commission. Ted presents a few options and asks 
for comments and suggestions.

This Note has been accepted for publication in the polymer journal 
MACROMOLECULAR CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS, published now by Wiley VCH in 
Germany. This provides us with an additional forum on the international 
scene. 

Les Sperling published a note on "Polymer Network Definitions" on the 
Back Page of the Fall 1998 issue of PMSE - POLYMERIC MATERIALS: SCIENCE 
AND ENGINEERING. "The Back Page" in these proceedings has become a 
regular nomenclature and terminology column.

Additional nomenclature and terminology articles are in preparation by 
Les and Val Metanomski for the Spring 1999 issues of the POLY and PMSE 
Preprints, and for the PMSE 75th anniversary commemorative book. 

Val has also submitted a final manuscript of the chapter on 
"Nomenclature" for the 4th edition of Wiley's POLYMER HANDBOOK, which 
introduces the IUPAC source-based and structure-based macromolecular 
nomenclature, discusses the use of trivial and semisystematic names for 
polymers, indicates the important features of CA Index names, and 
provides a list of polymer class names. 

Three Committee members (Metanomski, Wilks, and Works) attended the 
annual meeting of the IUPAC Commission on Macromolecular Nomenclature in 
July 1998 in Sydney, Australia, and actively participated in the 
generation and review of their new recommendations.

The Committee has a WWW page associated with the POLY WWW pages: 

                http://www.chem.umr.edu/~poly/nomenclature.html

which lists the Committee members (links are provided to their full and 
e-mail addresses) and provides the list of "Valid Recommendations on 
Macromolecular Terminology and Nomenclature".

From: Dr. W. V. Metanomski
        Chemical Abstracts Service
        2540 Olentangy River Road
        P.O. Box 3012
        Columbus, Ohio 43210-0012
phone: (614) 447-3631
fax: (614) 447-3713
e-mail: wvmetan@cas.org