Please do not laugh at my lil knowledge of c++ :-) code: #include<iostream> #include<string.h> #include<fstream> using namespace std; int main () { int sum = 0; string input; string alphabet = "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz"; cout << "Enter a word" << endl; cin >> input; //word value for ( int i=0, i< input.length() , i++) { q = alphabet.find(input[i]) sum+= 1 + q } cout << input.length()<<endl; cout << " sum " << sum << endl; system ("pause"); return 0 ; } trying to do the simplest of tasks(Well firstly)... all i want is to input a word, and assign a=1 b=2 etc and find the sum of the word. For some weird reason i'm getting a syntax error before ' ; ' ..... system ("pause"); and it won't let my for loop work!! syntax error before ' ) '..... , i++) I know you guys are great :-)

Probably because you used commas in your for loop where semicolons should be. Use: for (int i = 0; i < input.length(); i++)

Oh, you also need a semicolon at the end of each line in the for loop, a variable called q, and cin can't use string's like that (I think)

Here is a corrected and little optimized version: http://home.earthlink.net/~valiantsoul/test.cpp (Note I will not keep it on my server for very long so don't rely on me doing so)