Naming binary compounds

Binary compounds (those containing only two elements) are named in the following way.

Ionic compounds are named as metal non-metalides, for example

That is, the name of the metal followed by the name of the non-metal with its ending altered to be -ide.

In this context, the -ide ending signifies a simple negative ion containing only the non-metal whose name appears in the prefix to the name.

More examples are

Covalent compounds are named in a similar way, but a prefix is added to the name of the second non-metal to indicate how many atoms of this element are present in the compound. For example


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