IUPAC (International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry) recommends that a hyphen, or, alternatively, a slash, should be used to indicate a combination of two analytical techniques such as liquid chromatography separation combined with mass spectrometry detection, in the last definitions of terms relating to mass spectrometry. Thus, such combined methods can be written as liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry or alternatively liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry. The corresponding abbreviations are LC-MS or LC/MS.
