All languages provide the capability for inserting programmer comments to make the program listing more readable and to aid in testing and documenting the program. In BASIC, the keyword REMARK (which may be abbreviated REM) is used. The REMARK statement is a nonexecutable statement; that is, the REM and following comments appear only in the listing of the program and do not, in any way, affect execution of the program. FORMAT:

When a statement with the keyword REMARK is used, the entire line on which the statement appears is considered a comment.

The following example shows how the REMARK statement is used to document a program so that anyone can understand what the program is used for:

Not only can REMARK statements be used at the beginning of a program, they can be used throughout the program to separate different segments of a program and to introduce subroutines or loops.

BASIC is designed to be easy to learn, easy to use, and easy to remember. BASIC programs are meant to be simple so that even a novice can under-stand them.

Instructions which are preceded by line numbers are called program statements. The parts of a statement are: and descriptive information.

The BASIC character set is divided into three categories: alphabetic, numeric, and special characters. E notation (scientific notation) is used for representing very large and very small numbers. BASIC has included several predefined functions so that you dont have to code some of the more common mathematical functions.

Line numbers tell the computer the sequence of the instructions in your program. It is a good practice to increment your line numbers by 10 to allow for inserting additional statements between existing statements in your program. Spacing within a line is not important; however, appropriate use of spaces within a line makes it easier for you and others to read and under-stand. The first step in entering in a statement is keying in the line number. You do not have to key the BASIC statements in sequence, the computer sorts them into line number sequence. The system command LIST causes your program to be listed with the statements in ascending sequence by line number. The system command RUN is used to tell the computer to execute the program.

Unfortunately the computer does not detect logic errors; you will have to find those through testing and debugging. 

The REMARK statement is used to aid in documenting your program.