Labeling Points of a Polygon

[samwong]

Suppose we have a circle or a quadrilateral and we need to label it with A, B, C, and D. Do we have to label those points in sequence? (A, B, C, and D). Or Can we label it randomly?(A, B, D, and C)?

Thank you.

[tim]

If you are just making your own polygon you can label the points with whatever you want and in whatever order you want. If you somehow "need to" use labels A, B, C, and D, that means you have probably been given that constraint in the problem. If so, you should look for other constraints as well. For instance, if the problem just says "a quadrilateral has vertices A, B, C, and D", then you can put them in any order. However, if the problem refers to "quadrilateral ABCD", then they must go in order. So look to the problem for additional constraints to answer your question.

[RonPurewal]

Suppose we have a circle or a quadrilateral and we need to label it with A, B, C, and D. Do we have to label those points in sequence? (A, B, C, and D). Or Can we label it randomly?(A, B, D, and C)?

Thank you.

It's also important to note two more things here:

1/
The GMAT will never try to "trick" you. I.e., they won't do sneaky things, like using alphabetical letters in non-alphabetical order and hoping you won't notice. (In fact, they'll do precisely the opposite-- they'll always spell out things like "not necessarily in that order..." if they are relevant.)

2/
As Tim said, the convention is to name polygons either clockwise or counter-clockwise. So, if a quadrilateral is called "ABCD", then you could walk around the quadrilateral, in one of the two directions, and run into the points in that order.
However, the GMAT doesn't generally expect you to know such conventions.
In every official problem I've seen in which a polygon has a name, either (a) there's also a picture, or (b) the order isn't important.