The Geneva rules for nomenclature were described in 62 paragraphs. Some of these rules were:
* Saturated hydrocarbons would have names ending in -ane. 
* The traditional names of the first 4 in the series was to be kept (methane, ethane, propane and butane)
* Longer chains were to have their names derived from the appropriate Greek numeral e.g. pent (pentane), hex (hexane) etc.
* When naming compounds with side chains the name would be determined by the longest straight chain with a substituted group e.g. methyl propane (CHCH(CH)CH)
* The endings ene and ine were indicative of the presence of a double and triple bond respectively.
* For closed chain hydrocarbons the term "cyclo" was to be used meaning what was known as hexamethylene (CH) would now be called cyclohexane