statement ( statements without nested statementson the same lineseparated by semicolons some coders use this form to save program file real estatebut it usually makes for more readable code if you stick to one statement per line for most of your workx print(xmore than one simple statement as we learned in triple-quoted string literals span lines too in additionif two string literals appear next to each otherthey are concatenated as if had been added between them--when used in conjunction with the open pairs rulewrapping in parentheses allows this form to span multiple lines for examplethe first of the following inserts newline characters at line breaks and assigns to '\naaaa\nbbbb \ncccc'and the second implicitly concatenates and assigns to 'aaaabbbbcccc'as we also saw in comments are ignored in the second formbut included in the string in the firsts ""aaaa bbbb cccc"" ('aaaa'bbbb'cccc'comments here are ignored finallypython lets you move compound statement' body up to the header lineprovided the body contains just simple (noncompoundstatements you'll most often see this used for simple if statements with single test and actionas in the interactive loops we coded in if print('hello'simple statement on header line you can combine some of these special cases to write code that is difficult to readbut don' recommend itas rule of thumbtry to keep each statement on line of its ownand indent all but the simplest of blocks six months down the roadyou'll be happy you did truth values and boolean tests the notions of comparisonequalityand truth values were introduced in because the if statement is the first statement we've looked at that actually uses test candidlyit was bit surprising that backslash continuations were not removed in python given the broad scope of its other changessee the changes tables in appendix for list of removalssome seem fairly innocuous in comparison with the dangers inherent in backslash continuations then againthis book' goal is python instructionnot populist outrageso the best advice can give is simplydon' do this you should generally avoid backslash continuations in new python codeeven if you developed the habit in your programming days if tests and syntax rules