How many carbons in this skeletal structure? How many carbons are in this skeletal structure? I was told to draw a circle at the start of the structure and at each point the line turns off to get the total number of carbons but doing so would result in 6 carbons which I know is wrong but why is it wrong? And where on the structure are the carbons located? 

Thanks for clearing this up for me!
Your intuition is not wrong.

There are indeed 6 carbon atoms in the molecule (3-methyl-pentane).

With bondline/skeletal notation, there's a carbon atom at all the vertices; at the ends, and every time the line changes direction.

Counting the carbon atoms then becomes as simple as counting the vertices. 

This becomes more apparent if you explicitly write all the atoms like illustrated below: