Reading a row
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Start with the parameter, not the bottle
Which sounds obvious and is the step people skip. The container column has no meaning until you know what is being measured, and a kit packed before the analyte list is a kit packed on a guess.
A worked row: oil and grease
Container G. Preservation cool to 6 degrees C or below and acidify to pH below 2. Holding time 28 days. One material, two field actions, four weeks.
The container column first
G means glass and nothing else. That decision is made before capacity, before shape and before price, and it cannot be recovered later.
Then preservation, which happens at the water
Cool plus acid, inside 15 minutes of collection. That means ice and reagent in the field, which is a kit decision rather than a laboratory one.
Then the holding time, which is the route plan
28 days is generous and makes the logistics easy. The same four columns for coliform read PA or G, cool below 10 with thiosulfate, and 8 hours, which plans the whole day.
A contrasting row: fluoride
Container P. Preservation none required. Holding time 28 days. One material, nothing to do in the field, four weeks. The easiest row in the table.
And one that cannot be bottled: pH
Container P, FP or G, no preservation, "analyze within 15 minutes". The honest reading is that you need a meter at the water rather than a container at all.
Where multiple letters appear, you have a choice
"P, FP, G" means any of the three. That is where capacity, breakage risk and cost get to decide, and for most inorganic rows it is the situation.
Where one letter appears, you do not
G alone, or P alone. Those rows are the ones worth putting on a card, because they are the ones where a sensible-looking substitution ruins the result.
Read every row you will sample before you buy anything
Half an hour with the table and your analyte list produces a shopping list that is correct. Buying first and checking later produces a field day that has to be repeated.