We're delving into the vibrant world of ionic compounds. You know, those peculiar characters made up of positively charged cations and negatively charged anions? They're like the yin and yang of chemistry - they balance each other out to keep everything neutral. Let's dissect this concept and understand how we can work out the formula of an ionic compound.

The golden rule here? An ionic compound is always neutral. It's like a teeter-totter at the playground – you don't want one side to be heavier than the other, right? Same here! The positive charges (from cations) and negative charges (from anions) must cancel each other out. That's why when writing the formula of an ionic compound, you're essentially working out the perfect balancing act to reach a total charge of zero.

First things first - the ionic name game. Knowing the names of the ionic compounds can help us identify the elements present, but it doesn't tell us the ratio of the ions. Kinda like knowing a friend’s name but not knowing their coffee preference, right? 

A real-world example to illustrate this is Sodium Chloride (NaCl) - yes, the table salt! Sodium (Na), our cation, has a charge of +1 (it donated one electron), while Chlorine (Cl), our anion, has a charge of -1 (it accepted one electron). The charges cancel each other out (+1 and -1), giving us a neutral compound NaCl.