Table 1:

Symbols	Names
Must be unique within a given genome	Should be brief and specific
Must not be offensive or pejorative (ideally in any language)
Must not use superscripts or subscripts or punctuation*	Should minimize punctuation; commas, hyphens and parentheses are included for clarity**
Must only contain uppercase*** Latin letters and Arabic numerals	Must be written in American English
Must start with a letter	Must start with a lowercase letter (unless starting with an eponymous term or capitalised abbreviation)
Should not include “G” for gene, “H” for human, Roman numerals or Greek letters	Should not include the words “gene” or “human”
Should not spell proper names or common words or match commonly used abbreviations	Should start with the same letter as the symbol (to facilitate alphabetical listing and grouping)
Should avoid duplicating symbols in other species (unless orthologous)	Should not reference: any species, taxa, tissue specificity, molecular weight, chromosomal location, human-specific features and phenotypes, familial terms
Some letters or combinations of letters are used in a symbol to give a specific meaning, and their use for other meanings should be avoided where possible (see supplementary table 1).	Descriptive modifiers usually follow the main part of the name, to enable the use of a common root symbol for a gene group, e.g. ACADM “acyl-CoA dehydrogenase medium chain” and ACADS “acyl-CoA dehydrogenase short chain”.

^*see Supplementary Table 2 for punctuation exceptions in symbols

^**exceptions on punctuation are made for enzyme names

^***sole exception of C#orfs