Carbenes were once only thought of as short lived intermediates. The reactions of this section only deal with these short lived carbenes which are mostly prepared in situ, in conjunction with the main reaction. However, there do exist so called persistent carbenes. These persistent carbenes are stabilized by a variety of methods often including aromatic rings or transition metals. In general a carbene is neutral and has 6 valence electrons, 2 of which are non bonding. These electrons can either occupy the same sp² hybridized orbital to form a singlet carbene (with paired electrons), or two different sp² orbitals to from a triplet carbene (with unpaired electrons). The chemistry of triplet and singlet carbenes is quite different but can be oversimplified to the statement: singlet carbenes usually retain stereochemistry while triplet carbenes do not. The carbenes discussed in this section are singlet and thus retain stereochemistry.

The reactivity of a singlet carbene is concerted and similar to that of electrophilic or nucleophilic addition (although, triplet carbenes react like biradicals, explaining why sterochemistry is not retained). The highly reactive nature of carbenes leads to very fast reactions in which the rate determining step is generally carbene formation.