Drawing the Electron-Dot Formula for Methane, CH₄

The first thing that you must do is to determine the number of electrons available for the formula?

Hydrogen is in column IA and thus has 1 electron. Since there are 4 hydrogen atoms, the total for hydrogen will be 4 electrons.

Carbon is in column IVA and thus has 4 outer electrons...remember that we don't use the atomic number for electron-dot formulas.

The total number of electrons for all atoms is 8. What do you do next?