Types of periodic tables


Since Dimitri Mendeleev formulated the periodic law in 1871, and published an associated periodic table of chemical elements, authors have experimented with varying types of periodic tables for teaching, aesthetic or philosophical purposes.
Earlier, in 1869, Mendeleev had mentioned different layouts including short, medium, or even cubic forms. It appeared to him that the latter form would be the most natural approach but that "attempts at such a construction have not led to any real results". On spiral periodic tables, "Mendeleev...steadfastly refused to depict the system as ...His objection was that he could not express this function mathematically."

Typology

In 1934, George Quam, a chemistry professor at Long Island University, New York, and Mary Quam, a librarian at the New York Public Library compiled and published a bibliography of 133 periodic tables using a five-fold typology: I. short; II. long ; III. spiral; IV. helical, and V. miscellaneous.
In 1952, Moeller expressed disdain as to the many types of periodic table:
In 1954, Tomkeieff referred to the three principal types of periodic table as helical, rectilinear, and spiral. He added that, "unfortunately there also a number of freaks".
In 1974 Edward Mazurs, a professor of chemistry, published a survey and analysis of about seven hundred periodic tables that had been published in the preceding one hundred years; he recognized short, medium, long, helical, spiral, series tables, and tables not classified.
In 1999 Mark Leach, a chemist, inaugurated the INTERNET database of Periodic Tables. It has over 1300 entries as of December 2025. While the database is a chronological compilation, specific types of periodic tables that can be searched for are spiral and helical; 3-dimensional; and miscellaneous.
For convenience, periodic tables may be typified as either: 1. short; 2. triangular; 3. medium; 4. long; 5. continuous ; 6. folding; or 7. spatial. Tables that defy easy classification are counted as type 8. unclassified.

Short

Short tables have around eight columns. This form became popular following the publication of Mendeleev's eight-column periodic table in 1871.
Also shown in this section is a modernized version of the same table.
Mendeleev and others who discovered chemical periodicity in the 1860s had noticed that when the elements were arranged in order of their atomic weights there was as an approximate repetition of physiochemical properties after every eight elements. Consequently, Mendeleev organized the elements known at that time into a table with eight columns. He used the table to predict the properties of then unknown elements. While his hit rate was less than 50%, it was his successes that propelled the widespread acceptance of the idea of a periodic table of the chemical elements. The eight-column style remains popular to this day, most notably in Russia, Mendeleev's country of birth.
An earlier attempt by John Newlands, an English chemist, to present the nub of the same idea to the London Chemical Society, in 1866, was unsuccessful; members were less than receptive to theoretical ideas, as was the British tendency at the time. He referred to his idea as the Law of Octaves, at one point drawing an analogy with an eight-key musical scale.
John Gladstone, a fellow chemist, objected on the basis that Newlands's table presumed no elements remained to be discovered. "The last few years had brought forth thallium, indium, caesium, and rubidium, and now the finding of one more would throw out the whole system." He believed that there was as close an analogy between the metals named in the last vertical column as in any of the elements standing on the same horizontal line.
Fellow English chemist Carey Foster humorously inquired of Newlands whether he had ever examined the elements according to the order of their initial letters. Foster believed that any arrangement would present occasional coincidences, but he condemned one which placed so far apart manganese and chromium, or iron from nickel and cobalt.
The advantages of the short form of periodic table are its compact size and that it shows the relationships between main-group elements and transition-metal groups.
Its disadvantages are that it appears to group dissimilar elements, such as chlorine and manganese, together; the separation of metals and nonmetals is hard to discern; there are "inconsistencies in the grouping together of elements giving colorless, diamagnetic ions with elements giving colored, paramagnetic ions; and lack of reasonable positions for hydrogen, the lanthanide elements, and the actinide elements".
Some other notable short periodic tables include:
  • 1862 — Meyer's system: 28 elements in 6 columns
  • 1895 — Retger's Periodic Table: Intraperiodic accommodation of the rare earths
  • 1902 — Brauner's table: Intraperiodic accommodation of the rare earths
  • 1906 — Mendeleev's table: with six supposedly missing elements between H and He
  • 1919 — Hackh's table, with 9 columns in the top half and 11 in the bottom half. The position of an element in the table determines its properties.
  • 1923 — Deming's other table: Mendeleev style with dividing line between metals and nonmetals
  • 1924 — Hubbard chart of atoms: American classic
  • 1935 — Rysselberghe's table: Separated blocks
  • 1945 — Krafft's table: Ten groups
  • 1950 — Sidgwick's classification : Lanthanides collocated; actinides fragmented
  • 1960 — International Rectifier Corporation table: Rainbow style
  • 1975 — Shukarev's system: Transition metals turn back on themselves
  • 2011 — Tresvyatskii's table: Assignment of lanthanides and actinides to groups

    Triangular and pyramid

Triangular tables have column widths of 2-8-18-32 or thereabouts. An early example, appearing in 1882, was provided by Bayley.
Through the use of connecting lines, such tables make it easier to indicate analogous properties among the elements.
In some ways they represent a form intermediate between the short and medium tables, since the average width of the fully mature version is 15 columns.
An early drawback of this form was to make predictions for missing elements based on considerations of symmetry. For example, Bayely considered the rare earth metals to be indirect analogues of other elements such as, for example, zirconium and niobium, a presumption which turned out to be largely unfounded.
Advantages of this form are its aesthetic appeal, and relatively compact size; disadvantages are its width, the fact that it is harder to draw, and interpreting certain periodic trends or relationships may be more challenging compared to the traditional rectangular format.
Some other notable triangular periodic tables include:
  • 1895 — Thomsen's systematic arrangement: Electropositive and electronegative elements labelled
  • 1911 — Adam's table: Separation of lanthanides and radioactives
  • 1922 — Bohr's system: Based on modern atomic theory
  • 1935 — Zmaczynski's table: Period 0 above H-He
  • 1949 — Antropoff's representation revised by Fritz Scheele: Lanthanides and actinides included in main body
  • 1952 — Coryell's table: Bifurcating groups limited to 3 and 13
  • 1953 — Kapustinsky's table: Electron and neutron added to period 0; each period repeats once. There is a secondary diagonal relationship between the neutron, and hydrogen.
  • 1967 — Sanderson's table: 2-8-10-14 stacked periods
  • 1987 — Step-pyramid form of the periodic chart: Modernised version of 1882 Bayley
  • 1989 — Seaborg's electron shell table: Up to Z = 168
  • 1995 — Klein's table: Breaks at the start of each new block
  • 2023 — Marks' snub-triangular version of Mendeleyev's 1869 table: First tier has sp elements rather than H and He alone

    Medium

Medium tables have around 18 columns. The popularity of this form is thought to be a result of it having a good balance of features in terms of ease of construction and size, and its depiction of atomic order and periodic trends.
Deming's version of a medium table, which appeared in the first edition of his 1923 textbook "General Chemistry: An Elementary Survey Emphasizing Industrial Applications of Fundamental Principles", has been credited with popularizing the 18-column form.
LeRoy referred to Deming's table, "this...being better known as the 'eighteen columns'-form" as representing "a very marked improvement over the original Mendeleef type as far as presentation to beginning classes is concerned."
Merck and Company prepared a handout form of Deming's table, in 1928, which was widely circulated in American schools. By the 1930s his table was appearing in handbooks and encyclopedias of chemistry. It was also distributed for many years by the Sargent-Welch Scientific Company.
The advantages of the medium form are that it correlates the positions of the elements with their electronic structures, accommodates the vertical, horizontal and diagonal trends that characterise the elements, and separates the metals and nonmetals; its disadvantages are that it obscures the relationships between main group elements and transition metals.
Some other notable medium tables include:
  • 1893 — Rang's 17-column table: Forerunner of the modern 18-column table
  • 1920 — Stewart's arrangement: The lanthanides accommodated in its 18 columns
  • 1945 — Seaborg's table: Suggested an actinide series to complement the lanthanides
  • 1956 — Remy's "long" period form: Uranides competing with Seaborg's actinides
  • 1976 — Seaborg's futuristic table: Elements up to Z = 168
  • 1980 — Jodogne's tableau: Upside down
  • 1990 — IUPAC Red Book table: 15-wide f-block
  • 2002 — Inorganic chemist's table: Major and minor patterns indicated.
  • 2006 — Scerri's table: Symmetrical

    Long

Long tables have around 32 columns. Early examples are given by Bassett, with 37 columns arranged albeit vertically rather than horizontally; Gooch & Walker,
with 25 columns; and by Werner, with 33 columns.
In the first image in this section, of a so-called left step table:
  • Groups 1 and 2 have been moved to the right side of the table.
  • The s-block is shifted up one row, thus all elements not in the s-block are now one row lower than in the standard table. For example, most of the fourth row in the standard table is the fifth row in this table.
  • Helium is placed in group 2.
The elements remain positioned in order of atomic number.
The left step table was developed by Charles Janet, in 1928, originally for aesthetic purposes. That being said it shows a reasonable correspondence with the Madelung energy ordering rule this being a notional sequence in which the electron shells of the neutral atoms in their ground states are filled.
A more conventional long form of periodic table is included for comparison.
The advantage of the long form is that shows where the lanthanides and actinides fit into the periodic table; its disadvantage is its width.
Some other notable long tables include:
  • 1892 — Bassett's vertical arrangement: 37 columns sideways
  • 1905 — Gooch & Walker's system: 25 columns
  • 1905 — Werner's arrangement: 33 groups
  • 1927 — LeRoy's table: Left step precursor; three sets of transition elements
  • 1928 — Corbino's right-step table: No gaps between elements
  • 1934 — Romanoff's system: First long form with actinides under lanthanides
  • 1964 — Ternstrom's A periodic table: A triple-combo table drawing on the advantages of the complete block system according to Werner and a horizontal Bohr line-system; the outcome resembles the left step form of Janet
  • 1982 — Periodiska systems rätta form: Left step variation with novel placement of H-He
  • 2002 — Tabla Periódica de Los Elementos Químicos-Forma Armonica - Sistema A-2 : Left step variation in which groups 1 and 2 are redistributed
  • 2018 — Beylkin's table: Symmetrical table with lanthanides and actinides incorporated