I'm confused, in that it seems to work for me for both earlier and later compilers.... f90 -free -V z.f -Xlist f90: WorkShop Compilers 4.2 10/22/96 FORTRAN 90 1.2 .... chiba:/net/chiba/home2/khb>a.out First part of a particularly long error message, continued onto a second line First part of a particularly long error message, continued onto a second line with the 2.0 version... f90 -V -free z.f f90: WorkShop Compilers 5.0 98/12/18 FORTRAN 90 2.0 f90comp: WorkShop Compilers 5.0 98/12/18 FORTRAN 90 2.0 ... And with the version undergoing external testing... f90: Sun WorkShop 6 1999/12/25 FORTRAN 95 6.0 Dev First part of a particularly long error message, continued onto a second line First part of a particularly long error message, continued onto a second line call report("First part of a particularly long error"// & " message, continued onto a second line") call report("First part of a particularly long error" & //" message, continued onto a second line") end subroutine report(string) character*(*) string print*,string end humm, trying with fixed format source... f90 z.f ... call report("First part of a particularly long error"// & ^ "z.f", Line = 1, Column = 66: ERROR: Unexpected syntax: "operand" was expected but found "&". Is this the error you are seeing? If so, renaming your source files to .f90 or adding a -free command line option may do the trick. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%