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Italic letters naming the handedness of a stereocentre.
Also known as: CIP descriptors, Absolute configuration
R and S name the handedness of a stereocentre by ranking the four attached groups and reading their order. The ranking rules are arbitrary conventions, so a change in a distant part of a molecule can flip the letter without changing the shape at all.
Name the configuration at a stereocentre by ranking its substituents and reading their arrangement clockwise or anticlockwise.
Contexts: Laboratory
Depend on a priority ranking that is a convention rather than a physical property, so an unrelated substitution elsewhere can reverse the letter without altering the geometry.
Contexts: Laboratory
A single italic capital letter enclosed in brackets before a chemical name.