The van Arkel–Ketelaar triangle has been in use since the 1940s. A quantitative treatment of the triangle was carried out by Gordon Sproul in 1994 (J. Phys. Chem., 1994, 98, 6699). How many scales of electronegativity and how many compounds did Sproul investigate? What criteria were used to select compounds for the study? Which two electronegativity scales were found to give the best separation between areas of the triangle? What were the theoretical bases of these two scales?