On Mon, Jan 6, 2020 at 5:51 PM Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org> wrote:
Funny; I recall ALGOL using "comment ... ;" or was that ALGOLW (which I
loved using; I wish I still had my ALGOLW book)?

Algol-W   From, the Sites book, (Page 10, Section 1 'Terminology)  [Dave, I'll send you the PDF offline]. 

The symbol comment followed by any sequence of characters not -containing semicolons, followed by a semicolon, is called a comment. A comment has no effect on the meaning of a program, and is ignored during execution of the program.