Benzylacetate (C₆H₅ - CH₂ - O - CO - CH₃) is a more complicated organic molecule whose structure is illustrated in the following figure:

We can now distinguish between three different groups of protons that have been labeled accordingly. For example, the three protons labeled H_b clearly find themselves in a different atomic environment to that of the two protons labeled H_c.

The three H_b protons are bonded to the carbon C_b which is single-bonded to another carbon atom C_a. The two H_c protons are bonded to the carbon C_c which itself is single-bonded to the benzene ring and an oxygen atom. The third group of protons consists of the five protons H_d of the benzene ring itself. The figure above is a proton spectrum of benzylacetate in acetone - d6. In this spectrum we expect three signals corresponding to the three groups of protons.

Note that the position of signals from the benzene ring protons has been shifted slightly from 7.5 ppm (shown in the Spectrum of Benzene figure) to approximately 7.2 ppm (shown in the figure below).

The benzene ring protons are no longer magnetically equivalent, are to some extent not even chemically equivalent, and have been labeled accordingly. It is clear from figure 3.10 that the signal arising from the H_d protons is a multiplet, but such details will be omitted until the next section. The three proton peaks shown in this figure have clearly different intensities.

Quantitative analysis of the spectrum is relatively simple, since all the signals are emitted by the same ¹H isotope i.e. natural abundance and inherent sensitivity to the NMR technique is the same for each peak. Therefore the area under the benzene, CH₂ and CH₃ peaks should be in the ratio of 5:2:3 respectively corresponding to the contributing number of protons.