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D9.  SKELETAL FORMULAE 

Finally, it is worth being aware of yet a further term which has become ubiquitous within organic chemistry.

A Skeletal Formula is effectively chemical shorthand and was developed by the famous organic chemist Friedrich August Kekulé von Stradonitz (aka Kekulé) 1829-1896.

Carbon and hydrogen atoms are not shown explicitly.  A skeletal formula depicts just the skeleton structure that enables the 3-D molecular structure to be inferred unambiguously.  Other atoms like O, N and S are shown plus H atoms as constituents of OH groups, for example.  Some simple skeletal structures are shown below along with their molecular constitutions.

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