Properties of sech/tanh and sin/cos half-passage RF pulses are discussed in view of their use in surface coil MR spectroscopy. We focus on the use of these pulses in a regime which is partially adiabatic, i.e. not strictly adiabatic off-resonance, while on-resonance the adiabaticity condition is fulfilled. It is shown that the frequencies of the singular points of the excitation profiles, as well as their number, depend on the B1 field. This leads to a signal intensity reduction from off-resonance spectral regions over much broader ranges than generally believed. We show in particular that with surface coil, sin/cos RF pulses may perform particularly well, providing optimal excitation on resonance and a desired attenuation over a broad spectral range off-resonance. This feature is applied for the in vivo detection of rat liver glycogen by means of 13C MR spectroscopy. Under suitable RF power conditions, a remarkable attenuation of the signals from the saturated carbons of the subcutaneous fat can be achieved.