Drawing Lewis Structures from Lewis Symbols: A Direct Electron-Pairing Approach

We describe a different, more student-friendly approach to writing Lewis structures for covalent molecules and ions based on Lewis theory and Abegg's rule. Several rules for selecting central atoms are provided. Separate sets of rules are provided for diatomic molecules and ions and for polyatomic molecules and ions. For polyatomic species, we distinguish between cases where surrounding atoms are monovalent and cases where there is at least one polyvalent ligand atom. Examples are given to illustrate these rules.