Mechanisms of Organic Reactions

The mechanism of a reaction is the sequence of steps in the reaction, including details of the bonds are formed and/or broken in each step. Understanding mechanisms is key to understanding the reactions of organic compounds, and is essential to being able to use those reactions to make useful compounds.

a reaction mechanism

Your task in the problems on this site is to draw chemically reasonable curved (curly) arrows to account for the transformations.

Although the use of curly arrows to show the movement of electrons in organic reaction mechanisms is standard, the details of how they should be drawn are not universally agreed.

Two conventions for drawing curly arrows are available on this site. They differ in how curly arrows representing the formation of bonds between atoms that were not bonded to each other are drawn.  Choose one of the two styles below

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Conventional style


The most common convention, and the one used in most textbooks, is to draw curly arrows representing the formation of new bonds so that they point toward the electrophilic atom, as shown below.
conventional curved arrow mechansim

'Dotted line' style


A less common convention is to draw curly arrows representing the formation of new bonds so that they point toward the space between the atoms that are becoming bonded. For clarity, a dotted line is drawn between the atoms to show the position of the bond being formed, as shown below.
dotted line curved arrow mechansim

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