2.2.3 Line Continuation

Sentences, entries, phrases and clauses that continue in Area B of subsequent lines are called continuation lines. A hyphen in a line's indicator area causes the first nonblank character in Area B to be the immediate successor of the last nonblank character of the preceding line. This continuation excludes intervening comment lines and blank lines.

Note that if the continued line ends with a nonnumeric literal without a closing quotation mark, the first nonblank character in Area B of the continuation line must be a quotation mark. The continuation starts immediately after the quotation mark. All spaces at the end of the continued line are part of the literal.

If the indicator area of the continuation line is blank, then the compiler treats the last nonblank character of the preceding line as if it were followed by a space.