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I put in a new light fixture today. It came with this braided copper wire attached to the ground screw.

Plate with braided wire

Rather than use that braided wire, I simply secured the ground wire directly under the ground screw as shown.

Plate with ground wire under screw

I am now wondering whether this was OK to do, or whether there is a reason I should have used a wire nut to connect the ground wire and the braided copper wire instead.

Thanks!

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The way this is usually done is the ground wire is attached to a grounding screw on the junction box. The mounting bracket is then grounded by screwing it into the junction box. Then the braided wire connects to the green screw on the bracket.

It looks like your bracket is mounted wrong. There should be two screws from the bracket into your junction box. The bracket should be centered over the junction box. Spin the bracket around until the holes in the junction box match up with two holes in the bracket.

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  • Thanks for the reply! Am I understanding correctly that typically the free end of the braided wire from the bracket and the green ground wire from the wall both get fixed under the same screw in the junction box? I should've explained re the mounting--the issue was that the junction box was slightly offset with respect to the bathroom vanity I was mounting the light over. So I had to drill new holes on the mounting plate to deliberately offset it from the junction box by an inch so the light would be centered over the vanity (the photo above was taken before I finished securing it).
    – djrapp
    Sep 4, 2021 at 18:10
  • The green ground goes to the junction box and the free end of the braided ground should go to the fixture. Normally one wire per screw. The green wire can loop around the junction box grounding screw and then the end of it can be wire nutted to the free end of the braided wire. Drilling holes in brackets is a no no. It's UL listed and any modifications, drilling new holes, will/can void the listing.
    – JACK
    Sep 4, 2021 at 19:18

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