COBOL has an English-like syntax, which is used to describe nearly everything in a program. For example, a condition can be expressed as   or more concisely as    or  . More complex conditions can be "abbreviated" by removing repeated conditions and variables. For example,    can be shortened to . To support this English-like syntax, COBOL has over 300 keywords. Some of the keywords are simple alternative or pluralized spellings of the same word, which provides for more English-like statements and clauses; e.g., the and keywords can be used interchangeably, as can and , and and .