In the IDLE shell 3.10.2 I am trying to write a series of if statements and it will not let me

I am new to Python but am following along a book closely. I can’t figure out why this won’t work. When I click return to write a new line below the second “if” statement, the code attempts to run and says invalid syntax, highlighting the second “if”

Image of my code

Answer

The interactive window of IDLE knows that a block will follow an if statement, and expects that block to be ended by an empty line. According to the image of your code, you only used a backspace, and then IDLE expects an unindented part of the if instruction, said differently an else or elsif.

TL/DR: use an empty line to end an indented bloc.

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The interactive window is… interactive! It executes one statement at a time. If you want to prepare a full script and then execute it as a whole, you must create a new file (menu File/New) write the full script and save it to disk at execution time (F5 of menu Run/Run Module).