certainly forget the colon character very soon you'll get an error message if you doand most python-friendly editors make this mistake easy to spot including it eventually becomes an unconscious habit (so much so that you may start typing colons in your -like language codetoogenerating many entertaining error messages from that language' compiler!what python removes although python requires the extra colon characterthere are three things programmers in -like languages must include that you don' generally have to in python parentheses are optional the first of these is the set of parentheses around the tests at the top of the statementif ( ythe parentheses here are required by the syntax of many -like languages in pythonthoughthey are not--we simply omit the parenthesesand the statement works the same wayif technically speakingbecause every expression can be enclosed in parenthesesincluding them will not hurt in this python codeand they are not treated as an error if present but don' do thatyou'll be wearing out your keyboard needlesslyand broadcasting to the world that you're programmer of -like language still learning python ( knowbecause was oncetoothe "python wayis to simply omit the parentheses in these kinds of statements altogether end-of-line is end of statement the second and more significant syntax component you won' find in python code is the semicolon you don' need to terminate statements with semicolons in python the way you do in -like languagesx in pythonthe general rule is that the end of line automatically terminates the statement that appears on that line in other wordsyou can leave off the semicolonsand it works the same wayx there are some ways to work around this ruleas you'll see in moment (for instancewrapping code in bracketed structure allows it to span linesbutin generalyou tale of two ifs