The traditional chemical approaches, Lewis electron dot structures and molecular orbital theory, predict the relative bond orders of boron monofluoride, carbon monoxide, and dinitrogen to be BF less than CO less than N[subscript 2]. This is quantified by quantum mechanical, theoretical studies that show the bond orders to be approximately 1.4, approximately 2.6, and approximately 3.0, respectively. These results also confirm the chemical intuition that the change in bond order is primarily due to the pi component. The differences in bond order have a dramatic effect on the ligand behavior of the three molecules, particularly the propensity of BF to function as a bridging ligand. (Contains 9 figures.)