Question

Draw the canonical structures of the following: ?

a. Anisole
b. Benzaldehyde

Answer 1

A "canonical structure" is also known as a resonance structure, i.e. one of possibly more than one contributing structures that combine to produce the true, resonance hybrid structure.

Now that that's apparent, all you need to do is identify what these names represent, and draw them.

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Anisole is the common name for methoxybenzene, or phenyl methyl ether. So, drawing its "canonical structure" gives:

Benzaldehyde can be a misleading name; it's referring to a benzyl carbon, but the benzyl carbon is the aldehyde carbon, not one connected to the aldehyde carbon.

A clearer name would be phenyl methanal, where one hydrogen on methanaldehyde/formaldehyde (`"H"("C"="O")"H"`) is replaced with a phenyl group, `"C"_6"H"_5-`.