What's the right way to draw these capacitors in a schematic?

Both are the same electrically, but B is more compact and most people will find it easier to understand. If you want to emphasize that each cap is associated with a specific ground/power pair, you can use A to indicate that, especially if a different person is doing the layout.


As a professional electronics engineer I've never ever seen A. B is definitly the way to go. If the layout will be done by someone else you can always add a remark. But a layouter that doesnt know he should place bypass caps close to each pin shouldnt be a layouter at all.


B for sure in this case, with a separate doc for the placement (or even a diagram copy-pasted into the schematic.) For a big SoC it’s really the only way to represent the mixed values designers sometimes use to get good low-to-high frequency coverage.

The A drawing obscures the intent and is harder to read. The cap lines don’t even land on chip pin pairs. If I had to work with it I’d redraw it; it’s that bad.

That said, I’ve done style A on smaller ICs with individual caps on sensitive paired pins (PHY power and such), where having a small loop area is critical.