NEXT SENTENCE (not "MOVE NEXT SENTENCE") is sort of equivalent to "continue" in modern languages. In more "modern" COBOL's like COBOL-85, there is actually a "

NEXT SENTENCE (not "MOVE NEXT SENTENCE") is sort of equivalent to "continue" in modern languages. In more "modern" COBOL's like COBOL-85, there is actually a "CONTINUE" which is essentially a no-op. Some COBOL shops instituted a "one-period-per-paragraph" rule (on the last statement in a paragraph) to avoid some of this. And COBOL-85 (thankfully) added scope delimiters (i.e. END-IF) to help avoid the issues with periods.