Covalent bonding occurs when two nonmetal atoms share pairs of electrons to acquire stable electron configurations. Atoms form covalent bonds by sharing electrons, drawing Lewis dot structures to show these electron pairs. There are three main types of bonding: ionic, metallic, and covalent. Covalent bonding is the focus of this chapter and forms molecules by electron sharing between nonmetals. Molecular compounds are named using prefixes to indicate the number of each element present. Bond polarity is determined using electronegativity values and can classify bonds and molecules as ionic, polar covalent, or nonpolar covalent.