Determining the stereochemistry of a compound

having troubles with the assignation of configuration of compounds having more than one chiral center? This post is for you

When you want to describe the stereochemistry of a compound could be a good strategy to identify the diastereoisomers and then to think about whether they are chiral or not.

This is what you should do:

1. Draw the compound with the carbon skeleton in the usual zig-zag fashion running across the page
2. Identify the chiral centres
3. Decide how many diastereoisomers there are by putting the substituents at those centres up or down. It often helps to give each diastereoisomer a ‘tag’ name.
4. By checking on possible planes of symmetry, see which diastereoisomers are chiral.
5. Draw the enantiomers of any chiral diastereoisomer by inverting all the stereogenic centres
6. Conclusion

Source: Organic Chemistry Clayden, Greeves