The left-top side region in the two dimensional space is called the second quadrant.

## Introduction

In two dimensional Cartesian coordinate system, two number lines are bisected perpendicularly at their middle point to split the coordinate plane into four equal regions.

The left-top side region is called the second quadrant. Here, the region in the angle $YOX’$ is the second quadrant and denoted by a Roman numeral $II$.

In $\angle YOX’$, the $x$-axis represents negative values and the $y$-axis represents positive values. So, the signs of abscissa and ordinate of each point in this region should be negative and positive respectively.

If $x$-coordinate and $y$-coordinate of each point are represented by $x$ and $y$ respectively, then the values of them are written as $x < 0$ and $y > 0$ in mathematical form.

### Usage

The second quadrant in the two dimensional space is used to identity the location of a point whose abscissa is negative and ordinate is positive. Now, let’s learn how to use the second quadrant in coordinate geometry.

#### Example

Identify the location of the point $B(-5, 2)$.

In this example, the $x$ coordinate (or abscissa) is $-5$ and $y$ coordinate (or ordinate) is $2$.

1. Identity $-5$ on negative $x$-axis. Draw a line from $-5$ but the line should be parallel to positive $y$ axis and perpendicular to negative $x$ axis.
2. Identify $2$ on positive $y$ axis. Draw a line from $2$ but the line should be perpendicular to positive $y$ axis and parallel to negative $x$ axis.
3. The two straight lines are intersected perpendicular at a point in the plane and it is called the point $B(-5, 2)$.

In this way, the second quadrant of Bi-dimensional Cartesian coordinate system is used in coordinate geometry for identifying the location of any point whose abscissa is negative and ordinate is positive.

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