PEN TOOL: How to draw a "crescent moon" shape ?

Hey guys..
I'm in the process of teaching myself the "scary" pen tool once and for all! ...and I've been doing my own tracing exercises lately, and THOUGHT I was kicking some real butt. I thought there was no shape I couldn't conquer!
Only, I recently ran into a simple "crescent moon" shape. And I'm a bit stumped.
I can do it pretty easily with 3 points: 2 on the tips, converted to corners, and then one on either the inside or outside curve.
But, based on the 'ol "put the points at the END of your curve "rule" (as opposed to the middle), part of me thinks I should be able to do this with just 2 points.
Right?
I'm sure this is a simple thing... but the best I can get is a "half circle" shape, with one straight side and one curved side.
Am I over-thinking this?
Thanks in advance!
e

Ed,
A basic (and important) aspect of drawing with the Pen:
You're in the process of drawing a path. You clickDrag to create the end of a new curved segment. As you drag, you watch the curvature of the segment preceding the anchorPoint you are now placing. As you drag, you don't worry about the shape of the
next segment, which doesn't exist yet.
When the curvature of the preceding segment is as you want, you stop dragging BUT DO NOT MOUSEUP. Just stop dragging. You want the next segment to
not begin tangent to the one you just completed; you want a "cusp". Press and hold the Alt key and continue to drag. Now the outgoing handle moves independently of incoming handle, allowing you to position the first handle of the next segment as desired, without disturbing the last handle of the previous segment.
Practice that a kazillion times, until you can do it without thinking. You'll find that it prevents your having to continually switch tools to "convert" points and adjust handles.
That and a few similar "momentary" keyboard modifiers are essential to drawing with the Pen efficiently. The goal is to avoid the necessity to revisit the Toolbox while drawing paths and thereby making "hard" tool switches out of the Pen tool, because doing so breaks the Pen's ability to resume drawing where it left off, after you make an adjustment to an earlier part of the path.
One of the basic disadvantages of Illustrator's path manipulation interface is its inability to pull one retracted handle out of an anchorPoint without disturbing the other.
You can draw your crescent using two anchorPoints thusly:
1. At the top point of the crescent, ClickDrag diagonally downleft. Mouseup.
2. At the bottom point of the crescent, ClickDrag diagonally downright. DO NOT MOUSEUP.
3. Press and hold Alt. Continue to drag to a position upleft from the bottom anchorPoint. Mouseup. Continue to hold Alt.
4. At the top point of the crescent, ClickDrag upright. (Because you are holding Alt, the ClickDrag at the starting point will not wreck the pre-existing curve handle of the first segment.)
(There are, of couse, easier/quicker/more accurate ways to draw a crescent. It is tedious to maintain circular roundness of curves approaching 180 degrees of arc with just two anchorPoints.)
JET

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