Chemical compounds as classified as organic or inorganic.    Organic compounds are compounds that contain carbon usually in combination with elements such as hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen.   Inorganic compounds are compounds composed of elements other than carbon.   A few simple compounds of carbon such as carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, carbonates and cyanides are considered to be inorganic compounds.

Binary Molecular Compounds

Molecular compounds contain discrete molecular units (molecules).    They are usually composed of nonmetallic elements.   Many molecular compounds are also binary compounds.   Naming binary molecular compounds is very similar to naming binary ionic compounds.   When we write the formula of a binary molecular compound, we write the nonmetal with the most metallic character first.    Metallic character as the group number from the periodic decreases and as you go from top to botton within a group.

In naming a binary molecular compound, you name the more metallic element first.   You name the less metallic element by retaining the root of the element's name and adding the suffix -ide, just as you did with binary ionic compounds.

It is quite common for a pair of elements to form more than one compound.   In these cases, confusion is avoided by the use of Greek prefixes to indicate the number of atoms of each element in a molecule of the compound.   The following rules are used for naming binary molecular compounds.

1.   The more metallic element in the formula is named first.   The full name of the element is used

2.   The second element is named as if it were an anion.

3.   The number of atoms of each element is shown by a prefix, but the prefix mono- is never used for the first   element.

4.   If the second element is oxygen and a prefix ends with either an o or an a, these letters are dropped from the prefix to make pronunciation easier.

Naming Acids

Binary  Acids

A binary acid is a binary compound dissolved in water that contains hydrogen and another nonmetallic element.  A binary acid is named by adding the prefix hydro- and the suffix -ic to the root of the nonmetallic element, followed by the word acid.   The following is a list of the common binary acids.

Oxyacids

An oxyacid is a molecular substance containing hydrogen, oxygen, and another element which when added to water yields hydrogen ions and oxyanions.    The oxyacids are named by changing the -ate ending of an oxyanion to -ic or by changing the -ite ending to -ous and then substituting the word acid for the word ion.   The table below lists some common oxyacids.