[Fzang]

Sometimes there are reactions written in like 10 steps, where I could easily weed out some of the unnecessary steps (such as writing up a whole step for a proton dissociating alone).



So is the second way of doing it accepted as well, or do you need to write up intermediates sometimes? Can I technically put in as many arrows as I want, as long as it still makes sense (as well as being clear and understandable, of course! I'm not talking about 30 arrows per step  ) with regard to currently added reagents, catalysts etc.?

[pfnm]

Yes I've been wondering about some of the formalities of writing reaction mechanisms as well. This is a good question; I feel like I'm picking up bits and pieces of writing mechanisms, from lectures, lecture notes, texts and elsewhere. But are there a list of formal rules for mechanisms? Can condense steps like Fzang has asked?

[Honclbrif]

http://www.springer.com/chemistry/organic+chemistry/book/978-0-387-95468-4

Skipping steps can be a slippery slope. Frequently the steps you skip are trivial and you know exactly what happened, but there's that 1% of times that what you skipped actually makes a difference.

I'll usually skip obvious proton transfer steps, or tetrahedral intermediates, but that's about it. If you're writing the mechanism for a class or a test, don't skip anything.