Formaldehyde, water, methanol, butanal, and butanone are characterized by gas chromatography using three pulsed-discharge photoionization detectors (PDPIDs) and a flame ionization detector (FID). One of the PDPIDs is operated in helium mode, and the other two are operated in argon and krypton modes. The FID is included for comparison. The PDPIDs are used to efficiently differentiate between and quantitatively identify formaldehyde and the other three compounds in a sample mixture. This is accomplished by using butanone as the internal standard and correlating the relative responses of the four organic compounds in the helium-, argon-, and krypton-mode PDPIDs with their relative retention times.