Talk:Formal charge

"Where V is the number of valence electrons of the atom in isolation (atom in ground state);"
You can't start a paragraph with that non-statement. I remember reading this article about a year ago, and am pretty sure it was in a better state than now. What on Earth happened here? Some kind of disaster. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.75.149.23 (talk) 18:41, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
 * OK, I found out what happened: some vandal deleted the most important part of the introduction to the article. Strange that nobody noticed before me.

Is valence charge the same as formal charge?
Valence charge redirects here, but the article doesn't say that it is an alternate name, and from what I've found searching, they don't appear to be equivalent. However, I've been unable to find a good definition of valence charge. Does anybody know? Also, does Wikipedia have an article on the equivalent of electrostatic valency? -- Kjkolb 02:44, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Definitely Subtract!
It's definitely subtract! Look at the examples that were given below, and even on other websites... Perhaps one might have remembered the equation as I did with "valence electrons minus the quantity of one half those electrons bonding plus the number nonbonding."

Merge with Lewis Structure?
Discussion of formal charge is almost useless outside of a discussion of Lewis structure... should this be merged? --ES2 16:13, 23 February 2006 (UTC)


 * This article should not be merged, formal charge deserves a separate article, just like the octet rule and resonance and lewis structure. When topics are related it should not mean they should merge. This reasoning will end up with octet rule, electron counting, resonance piled together in one big article which will look more like a chemistry text book than an encyclopedia. This merge must get undone and the lewis structure article should be improved. It barely contains internal links and contains duplicate information. V8rik 16:53, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Redirecting
I'm redirecting this as the relevant information is now at Lewis structure --ES2 04:42, 26 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Both articles formal charge and lewis structure have been expanded and serve their purpose V8rik 16:20, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

"Half of Bonded Electrons" vs "Number of Covalent Bonds"?
"Invitation to Organic Chemistry" by A. William Johnson reports the formula to be "Formal Charge = number of valence electrons - number of unshared electrons - number of covalent bonds". It sure seems easier to count "3 covalent bonds" compared to "half of 6 bonded electrons", even though it's the same thing. Any objections to mentioning this in the article as another way to remember it? Seems like this would be far easier to use than the latter half of the article dealing with drawing circles. PS. I see the Valence Charge article uses this for the Formal Charge formula. JeramieHicks 22:53, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

"Alternative Method"
The alternative method is exactly the same as the regular method described except with some extra circle-drawing thrown in for no reason, and it takes up a ridiculous amount of space. Can someone justify, shorten, or delete this section please? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.215.220.184 (talk) 07:09, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Renamed "Alternative Method" to "Pictorial Method". (Could have been called "Visual Method".)  I agree that this section would benefit from reworking, or incorporating into the previous discussion.Christopher King (talk) 21:54, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Total formal charge
Is the total formal charge of one molecule the same as the charge if the molecule is an ion?

For example, BH4- has total formal charge of -1, and its charge on the molecule is -1. Is it coincidence or there is some explanation behind it? Psvo277 (talk) 07:04, 14 April 2019 (UTC)


 * Formal charge is determined by using a particular method (homolytic bond cleavage) of assigning "ownership" of each of the molecule's electrons to a particular atomic center within the molecule. This process doesn't change the total number of electrons (or protons) in the molecule, so, yes, by definition, the formal charges of all the atoms will necessarily sum to the charge of the species. -Bryanrutherford0 (talk) 17:42, 14 April 2019 (UTC)

The trichloro(triphenylphosphine)palladium(1-) example seems questionable
I don't currently have a means of drawing molecular structures, sadly. (I'm on MacOS, and I used ChemBioDraw in the past, if anyone has suggestions for a Free Software alternative that would be welcome and appreciated, thank you.) The picture with three versions of trichloro(triphenylphosphine)palladium(1-) seems dubious, with respect to the two "organic chemistry" versions that appear on the left and in the center. I agree with the "inorganic convention" version on the right, although I think an inorganic chemist might specify Pd(II) using Roman numerals for the oxidation state because it is a metal ion (or atom, depending on how you classify metal complexes, where the ion cannot truly be isolated).

The two "organic" versions seem rather preposterous, because they don't specify that it is palladium(II) or palladium(2+), and the oxidation state of the palladium must be deduced from the overall charge combined with the prior knowledge that single-bonded chlorine will have an oxidation state of 1-. Honestly, speaking about an "organic convention" for a molecule that includes a transition metal is kind of inappropriate, it is at best organometallic chemistry, or simply inorganic chemistry. The metal isn't bonded directly to any carbon atoms, but there are carbon atoms on one ligand, so it's arguably not even organometallic. Phosphine and chloride are each inorganic, aside from the phosphine substituents. In any even, I think an organic chemist would explicitly say Pd(II) or Pd(2+), and then possibly put a (1-) on each chloride ligand, and maybe use dotted lines for the bonds to indicate that they are almost ionic bonds in character. The number of valence electrons on palladium is not entirely clear, and counting valence electrons is part of the process for assigning formal charge according to this article. Oxidation state is honestly much easier to assign in this palladium complex example - the palladium has an oxidation state of 2+, which is very common for palladium, and each chlorine is 1-, and you don't need to ever answer the question of how many "valence electrons" belong to neutral palladium.

I think perhaps the example should be removed, because it is about "organic chemistry conventions" but it's showing a palladium that is not even bonded to any carbon atoms. Organic chemistry does not deal with this species. Fluoborate (talk) 10:32, 13 May 2024 (UTC)