The structure and purpose of this program are similar to Sinclair's Apostrophe program to teach general punctuation, but this one deals with the punctuation of direct speech.

While the Spectrum's character set caused problems with the apostrophe, fortunately, the speech marks in Speech Marks are much easier to use.

Similar criticisms to the other program apply, however.

The presentation is fairly juvenile, though the work is quite advanced. The examples given are only cursory. The child has to work through three stages before the ZX printed certificate emerges.

Sadly, there are two major errors in this program. The examples give incorrect information about the punctuation of certain sentence structures, and this is further reinforced by the following exercises.

In addition, a bug appears to have crept into one of the exercise sentences. A vital work is missed out, leaving an incomplete sentence which can't be punctuated correctly. Until this is discovered, the user cannot proceed.

Add to this a strange split layout of certain sentences, some of them excruciatingly contrived, and the result is not very good.

This program should be withdrawn and reconsidered.

D.M.