How to plot points on the Cartesian coordinate plane
An ordered pair tells you where a point belongs on the grid. Let’s start at the origin, use the two numbers one at a time, and see how their signs tell us the quadrant.
Find the axes and the origin
The Cartesian plane has a horizontal -axis and a vertical -axis. They meet at the origin, . Positive goes right and negative goes left. Positive goes up and negative goes down.
Read the coordinates in order
In an ordered pair , the first number tells you how far to go left or right from the origin. The second tells you how far to go up or down from there. For , start at the origin, go right units, then up units. Place a dot where you stop.
Use the signs to name the quadrant
Quadrant I is the upper-right part of the plane. Go counterclockwise from there: quadrant II is upper left, III is lower left, and IV is lower right. In the diagram, the signs show which direction to move horizontally and vertically.
For , the first number is positive and the second is negative. Go right unit and down , so the point is in quadrant IV.
A point on an axis isn’t in a quadrant
If , there’s no up-or-down move, so the point lies on the -axis. For example, is three units to the right of the origin. If , the point lies on the -axis: is two units below the origin. When both coordinates are zero, you’re at the origin itself.
Once you can plot individual points, try how to graph a line from an equation.