Abbreviations for names of rock-forming minerals

Nearly 30 years have elapsed since Kretz (1983) provided the mineralogical community with a systematized list of abbreviations for rock-forming minerals and mineral components. Its logic and simplicity have led to broad acceptance among authors and editors who were eager to adopt a widely recognized set of mineral symbols to save space in text, tables, and figures.

Few of the nearly 5000 known mineral species occur in nature with a frequency sufficient to earn repeated mention in the geoscience literature and thus qualify for the designation “rock-forming mineral,” but a reasonable selection of the most common and useful rock-forming minerals likely numbers in the several hundreds. The original list by Kretz (1983) contained abbreviations for 193 of these.

We propose an expansion to the list initiated by Kretz (1983) (see next page). Modest expansions and revisions were made by Spear …