Preface

Errors are a common companion of all human activity, including work in the laboratory. Yet it is a great pity if erroneous results are produced with great effort and by using expensive instruments and demanding procedures. Therefore a book about sources of errors in high performance liquid chromatography, one of today's most widely used analytical methods, is not superfluous. Maybe the topic is not welcomed enthusiastically but I hope I have found a design which encourages reading and thinking.

In conception, at least, possible problems can be divided into two categories. ‘Errors’ are troublesome opponents of accurate and precise analytical results which, however, can be understood; we need to remember and to anticipate them. In contrast, ‘pitfalls’ are totally unexpected intruders and the secret behind them is difficult to discover. The worst are those which are not detected but which affect the result anyway. Nevertheless, the book does not distinguish between the two types. The readers decide how they classify them. With increasing experience in HPLC it should become easier to avoid the pitfalls.

The third edition could be expanded with new examples and proposals. Many people helped me with examples, hints or ideas on how to improve the text and figures. I want to thank all of them. Special thanks to the publisher who supports the idea of a picture book, not for children but for novices and experts in the analytical laboratory. I hope that the book will be a useful aid in daily laboratory work thanks to intelligible explanations and lucid illustrations.

Veronika R. Meyer

St. Gallen, August 2012