We show for the first time that the quenching of electronic excitation from
nuclear recoils in liquid xenon is well-described by Lindhard theory, if the
nuclear recoil energy is reconstructed using the combined (scintillation and
ionization) energy scale proposed by Shutt {\it et al.}. We argue for the
adoption of this perspective in favor of the existing preference for
reconstructing nuclear recoil energy solely from primary scintillation. We show
that signal partitioning into scintillation and ionization is well-described by
the Thomas-Imel box model. We discuss the implications for liquid xenon
detectors aimed at the direct detection of dark matter
