How to Draw the Lewis Dot Structure for Cl- (Chloride ion)

A step-by-step explanation of how to draw the Cl- Lewis Dot Structure.

For the Cl- structure use the periodic table to find the total number of valence electrons for the Cl atom. Once we know how many valence electrons there are in Cl we can distribute them around the Chlorine atom.

Because the chloride ion (Cl-) has an extra electron (the negative sign denotes an extra electron) we need to add that to the 7 valence electrons for the neutral Cl atom.

In the Lewis structure of Cl- structure there are a total of 8 valence electrons. Cl- is also called Chloride ion.

----- Lewis Resources -----
• Lewis Structures Made Simple: youtu.be/1ZlnzyHahvo
• More practice: youtu.be/DQclmBeIKTc
• Counting Valence Electrons: youtu.be/VBp7mKdcrDk
• Calculating Formal Charge: youtu.be/vOFAPlq4y_k
• Exceptions to the Octet Rule: youtu.be/Dkj-SMBLQzM

Drawing/writing done in InkScape. Screen capture done with Camtasia Studio 4.0. Done on a Dell Dimension laptop computer with a Wacom digital tablet (Bamboo).

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