RULE 1 - Use "/" in column 7 and blank or comment
lines to control program formatting instead of "EJECT"
and "SKIP" commands.
Forty-four of the fifty programs used EJECT and/or SKIP commands.
Five programs, usually short ones, did not use any program formatting
commands, but relied on the use of blank lines for this purpose.
Only one program used the "/" to force a page eject,
however this program was written by an individual who was aware
of some of the authors research and had only begun using it within
the previous month.
It appears that the knowledge of the "/" to force
a page eject is almost entirely unknown among this large group
of programmers even 15 years after it became available.
Interestingly, several programmers were apparently bothered
by the fact that the EJECT and SKIP commands do not enhance the
reading of the source program on a CRT. They tended to precede
and follow each of these commands with a blank link so that source
program readability was enhanced on the terminal screen as well
as in the program listing. The "/" directive would
have done this for them.
RULE 2 - When not as part of a comment block, use blank lines
rather than blank comment lines.
Most programmers used blank lines to separate blocks of code.
However, ten of the programs continued to use a blank comment
line instead.