Chemical element
Whereas the mass number simply counts the total number of neutrons and protons and is thus a natural (or whole) number, the atomic mass of a single atom is a real number giving the mass of a particular isotope (or "nuclide") of the element, expressed in atomic mass units (symbol: u). In general, the mass number of a given nuclide differs in value slightly from its atomic mass, since the mass of each proton and neutron is not exactly 1 u; since the electrons contribute a lesser share to the atomic mass as neutron number exceeds proton number; and (finally) because of the nuclear binding energy. For example, the atomic mass of chlorine-35 to five significant digits is 34.969 u and that of chlorine-37 is 36.966 u. However, the atomic mass in u of each isotope is quite close to its simple mass number (always within 1%). The only isotope whose atomic mass is exactly a natural number is C, which by definition has a mass of exactly 12 because u is defined as 1/12 of the mass of a free neutral carbon-12 atom in the ground state.
Mass (mass spectrometry)
The nominal mass for an element is the mass number of its most abundant naturally occurring stable isotope, and for an ion or molecule, the nominal mass is the sum of the nominal masses of the constituent atoms. Isotope abundances are tabulated by IUPAC: for example carbon has two stable isotopes C at 98.9% natural abundance and C at 1.1% natural abundance, thus the nominal mass of carbon is 12. The nominal mass is not always the lowest mass number, for example iron has isotopes Fe, Fe, Fe, and Fe with abundances 6%, 92%, 10%, and 2%, respectively, and a nominal mass of 56. For a molecule, the nominal mass is obtained by summing the nominal masses of the constituent elements, for example water has two hydrogen atoms with nominal mass 1 and one oxygen atom with nominal mass 16, therefore the nominal mass of HO is 18.