Talk:Grossularite

Grossularite?

I'm usually not particularly bothered about the name given to articles and avoid changing them for the sake of it. However, in this case I think it would be a very good idea to move the page to grossular and try to minimise the use of "grossularite" for a number of reasons: (1) I'm aware of no practising mineralogists who use "grossularite", I know many who write about grossular. (2) All the literature I can easily lay my hands on calls it grossular (this includes a number of standard textbooks including Deer, Howie & Zussman). (3) Google picks up about 10 times more hits for grossular when compared to grossularite. (4) Google scholar has 41 articles with grossularite in the title about 208 with grossular, of the 41 only 1 is "recent", 36 of the grossular articles are "recent". (5) Most online sources I can find list grossularite as a synonym for grossular and not the other way around. (6) "Grossularite" has a huge ability to confuse the reader - I read it and imagine a rock made predominantly of grossular and not an archaic name for a garnet.

Note, I'm not arguing that grossularite is wrong, just that we should use the more usual grossular. I've not been able to find an IMA recommendation on the subject, which would rather clinch things. The only real question - is "grossularite" used more in gemology? Andreww 21:56, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

I am in agreement with you. The reliable web mineral databases: Mindat, Webmineral, and Mineral Data Pub. all agree that the correct name is grossular. These databases typically strictly follow IMA reccomendations and I'm sure they are doing so here. Whether or not the gem business uses the term is rather irrelevant as this is first a mineralogy article. This shuffle was made without discussion so I plan to recreate the grossular page and make grossularite a redirect again. I don't want to do a page move as that would require deleting the history of the grossular page. Vsmith 00:09, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

If following the IMA is what this is all about - Grossular is accepted - per p57. Grossularite however, is in usage in the gemological field. It is the term used in my Gemological Institute of America handbook. An older dictionary I have (Robert Shipley's Dictionary of Gems and Gemology, 5th edition 1951) states that Grossular is the British term for Grossularite.

For protagonists of IMA, please keep in mind their statement...

It must be understood that the CNMNC does not wish to impose an arbitrary set of rigid rules on the mineralogical community, but rather to provide a set of coherent guidelines that provide a reasonably consistent approach to the introduction of new minerals and the application of mineral nomenclature.

While a guideline, the mineralogical and gemological fields overlap, and one should not assume that one outplays the other. I concede that a naming guideline is helpful, and I agree that apart from the subspecies Tsavorite and gem Hessonite, grossularITE :) is really a mineralogy article, and do not mind the reversal of the redirect. Cheers. SauliH 05:04, 26 January 2007 (UTC)