by their shape, microscope and do the gramstain. This uses two dyes, main dye is the purple one, called crystal violet and it binds to peptidoglycan, so if the cell wall is very thick on the outside made of peptidoglycan, it will bind to this and turn purple. Other cells have a outer membrane and the purple cannot bind with the peptidoglycan, and we throw a pink dye in there as well and these cells turn pink. The purple cells are gram positive and the pink ones are gram negative. Gram positive means the antibiotic can work for this, if its pink it means the antibiotics cannot get access to the cell wall.