Wikipedia:Chemical ASCII-art

Chemical ASCII-art describes the utilization of ASCII art to represent chemical bonding structure. Start lines with a space, so that it will be formatted exactly as typed in a fixed-width font.

For this, one uses the "chemifishbone"

   |
   |
 -- --
   |
   |
 -- --
   |
   |
 -- --
   |    
   |
 -- --
   |    
   |       

One can copy the length that you need or copy it several times to depict a longer structure.

This ASCII art structure can be used to represent bonding between different atoms, for example with carbon and oxygen:

   H
   |
   |
H--C--OH
   |
   |
H--C--OH
   |
   |
H--C--OH
   |    
   |
   H

or

   CH2-OH
   |
   CH-OH
   |
   CH2-OH

For biochemistry one can use the carbon chemifishbone with carbon atoms filled in:

   |
   |
 --C--
   |
   |
 --C--
   |
   |
 --C--
   |    
   |
 --C--
   |    
   |

Or:

    |
  --+--
    |
  --+--
    |
  --+--
    |

which reduces the visual clutter from carbon atoms which are always present.