Identifying salts via formulas

[marina niland 3b]

How do you identify whether a salt is acidic, basic, or neutral simply by looking at the formula (without calculating the pH)?

[Nicole Coulter]

What I do is break the salt up into its parts and ask myself if it is a strong acid/base or comes from a strong acid or base. For example LiNO3 and KCl both contain the cation of a strong base and an anion of the strong acid, because of this they are all "spectator" ions and do not affect pH so it is a neutral salt. Or NH4Br for example contains Br - an anion of a strong acid (so it will be a spectator), but also contains the conjugate acid of a weak base, NH3. Because of this we know only NH4 will be changing the pH, and because it is an acid, we know it will be an acidic solution.