I believe the advantage of > if (...) { > ... > } else { > ... > } is to write very dense code, especially when the block itself is single line. This style may not be readable to some people. This style is not very consistent, > if (...) { > ... > } > else > { > ... > } I believe it would better be /* comment */ if (...) { ... } /* comment */ else { ... } The advantage of this style is not as dense as previous one, and good for comment. if (...) { ... } else { ... } The last style is very sparse, and very readable. It just wastes too much screen and paper (if you wanna print). BTW, I am not sure it has been mentioned already. We should enfore {} even for single line block. Since we use plenty of macros that may be expanded to multi lines, it is much safer and consistent to always use {}. Hong