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Puncman is a software package containing two programs that aim to help children from the age of eight upwards learn elementary punctuation in an enjoyable way. Puncman, a sort of educated Pacman, writes a short story on the screen and a character called Nosher swipes the punctuation marks.

In the first program, it's the capital letters and full stops that he takes. With in the second, he becomes bolder and takes the commas and question marks as well. The pupil has to help Puncman replace them all correctly by guiding him, using the cursor keys.

There are seven stories in each game, each of a different level of difficulty. A good feature is that you can choose the story level you want without having to go through the others. One criticism is that it would be nice if you could jump back to the instructions from the game. It would also be nice to have the option of varying the speed of Puncman who might be too slow for some children, too fast for others. Having said that it's a nice program well written and instructional.

Nigel Peters