Formal Charges

[remymink4J]

Are we ever going to have to find the total formal charge of a compound? Or just the individual formal charges of each bond?

[Chem_Mod]

Formal charge is assigned to each individual atom in a compound. The sum of all formal charges should equal the total charge of the compound.

[chemgal4L]

I'm a little bit confused as to how you determine which resonance structure is the most stable. Do you have to find the formal charge of each specific atom and see how they differ, or do you find the formal charge of the entire molecule and choose the one that's closest to zero? Or is that the same thing?

[Melanie Maeda 3I]

The most stable structure will have most if not all atoms at a formal charge of zero, if that helps, so it is a little bit of both of your ideas. But simply put, the most stable resonance structure will have the most atoms at a 0 for formal charge, because if you think of it in terms of a total, you could be dealing with +1s and -1s that cancel each other out and whatnot, so it is better to look at individual atoms in the structure.