For too many times I've seen wrong usage of terms like VLF, ELF and similar.

As a matter of
fact if you go and look over the web in articles connected with VLF, you'll see that almost
everyone uses different term for something that is ELF, or SLF or vice versa. In some article
you will read that 4kHz is ELF, while the other article you'll read that 4kHz it is VLF. So where is
this 4kHz anyway? And what is difference between ELF, ULF and VLF?
Each frequency range has a band designator and each range of frequencies behaves differently
and performs different functions. The frequency spectrum is shared by civil, government, and
military users of all nations according to International Telecommunications Union (ITU) radio
regulations. For communications purposes, the usable frequency spectrum now extends from
about 3Hz to about 300GHz. There are also some experiments at about 100THz where research
on laser communications is taking place but we won't discuss this now. This range from 3Hz to
300GHz has been split into regions. The good thing is that once this range has been split it
remained that way and became standard. And it is up to you if you want to accept this standard
or not. Frequency band standard is described in International Telecommunications Union radio
regulations. And it looks as follows.
Designation
ELF extremely low frequency
SLF superlow frequency
ULF ultralow frequency
VLF very low frequency
LF low frequency
MF medium frequency
HF high frequency
VHF very high frequency
UHF ultrahigh frequency
SHF superhigh frequency
EHF extremely high frequency

Frequency
3Hz to 30Hz
30Hz to 300Hz
300Hz to 3000Hz
3kHz to 30kHz
30kHz to 300kHz
300kHz to 3000kHz
3MHz to 30MHz
30MHz to 300MHz
300MHz to 3000MHz
3GHz to 30GHz
30GHz to 300GHz

Wavelength
100'000km to 10'000 km
10'000km to 1'000km
1'000km to 100km
100km to 10km
10km to 1km
1km to 100m
100m to 10m
10m to 1m
1m to 10cm
10cm to 1cm
1cm to 1mm

However, to simplify things about VLF a good idea would be to use term audio frequency
range. Imagine doing a project covering 20 Hz to 20 kHz, it would be annoying to write
ELF/SLF/ULF/VLF all the time. But again it would not be correct if you just write VLF because
there is much more in that range. Right? Instead, simply use term 'audio frequency range'. As I
said in the beginning there are already dozens of articles with wrong frequency designations
and a good thing would be to correct and minimize mistakes.
On some documents that describe electromagnetic spectrum you might see terms like LW, MW
and SW. In a lot of occasions you might see them mixed in the same context as frequency
range we mentioned above. For example here is a quote from one webpage: ''...extends thru
LW, MW, HF and VHF.'' This is wrong! We talk apples and oranges here. LW is not LF, and
MW is not MF, therefore you can't put them together in same context with HF and VHF.
LW, MW and SW are frequency designations of AM broadcast radio stations, and thats about it.
They have nothing to do with ITU's band designations we mentioned in the table above. Some
countries don't even have LW, so you should not mix LW, MW or SW with HF, VHF etc. unless
you are talking about AM broadcast stations. To be exact MW and HF should never be mixed
together in the the same context. Here is the frequency table for AM broadcast bands:
Designation
LW
MW
SW

Name
long wave
medium wave
short wave

Frequency
153 - 279 kHz
531 - 1620 kHz
2310 - 25820 kHz