Ria, the negative sign applies only once to the fraction. Either for the numerator, or the denominator, but not both. For convention, we put the negative sign at the numerator to avoid ambiguity.

Negative fractions can be written 3 ways :

- a/b ①
(negative sign in the middle. So it's the negative of an entire fraction itself eg. - ⅔ is the negative of ⅔)

-a/b ②
(Negative sign on the numerator. This represents dividing the negative of a whole number by another whole number. Eg. -2/3 )

a/-b ③

(Negative sign on the denominator. This represents dividing a whole number by the negative of another whole number eg. 2/-3)

② and ③ are used commonly for cross multiplication, with ② being the more common representation.

When you go on to leaning to finding gradients of lines you would encounter ③ quite often.


① is used to represent things like a final answer , evaluated part of a line of working


In all 3 cases, the negative sign is only applied once.

If you apply it twice during cross multiplication, it's saying that both numerator and denominator are negative. This makes the fraction become positive overall.

Ria, in a similar way, 3 x (2/11) = 6/11 and not 6/33 because the 3 only goes to the numerator, but never the denominator or worse, both.

For the negative sign, either numerator or denominator is ok, but not both.

- 4/5 ①

= - (4 ÷ 5)

= -4 ÷ 5

= -4/5 ②

Or

= -(4 ÷ 5)

= 4 ÷ (-5)

= 4/-5 ③

All three are equivalent.