My muddiest point this week was 5.4. I had a hard time distinguishing between monatomic and polyatomic. Now I understand better because I read more about them and how to distinguish them. monatomic ions are when you have a charge you have an ion so those are called monatomic ions. For mono meaning one atom, it's a single atom ion. A Way to differentiate a polyatomic ion there are main differences between the two. Well, polyatomic means you have more than one. Poly means more than one. For an example of that would be OH1− , now what does this mean this means that you have two atoms of oxygen typically having a charge of two minus and hydrogen typically having a charge of one plus and if you combine their charges they end up having a net charge of 1- this whole group will act like a single unit they tend to be inseparable and that's when you call them a polyatomic ion. An example that got me was When naming an ionic compound consisting of monoatomic ions, which ion will be listed first? To what I answered that the ion with the smaller magnitude of charge. This was incorrect. The correct answer is the cation because it will always be listed first.