How many steps should you go to the right or left and up or down from the origin?
Practice makes perfect
To graph the point (x,y), we use the x-coordinate to tell us how far we should move to the right or left from the origin. The y-coordinate shows us how far to move up or down. We have the point (-2,1), so to graph this point we should go 2 steps to the left and 1 step up from the origin.