Various surface-optical spectra can be described in terms of energy derivatives of the bulk dielectric function. The spectra unequivocally indicate that critical point energies obtained from optical data are not necessarily equal to bulk values and that surface chemical and structural terminations are at least contributing factors. We invoke localization and transition-lifetime arguments to describe these effects. Existing surface-optical calculations do not address these contributions, which may explain in part why discrepancies remain between theory and experiment.